hello from New Zealand
 

Hi guys
Im Alex, im from Taranaki, New Zealand.
stainless fabricator by trade doing allsorts of stuff, from 250,000 litre milk and wine silos for the dairy and wine industry to domes, bends and spheres for my current employer (google images for "tall tree and the eye" at the guggenhein museum in spain) as well as general maintenance work in stainless and carbon and alluminum.

I find myself being drawn toward the finer art of sheetmetal fabrication and forming using hammer and bag and the english wheel

any questions just ask

cheers
Alex

Welcome Alex. There are quite a few Kiwis here these days.

Stainless is difficult to shape. Simple rolls are pretty easy but I'm interested in the techniques you use to make spheres and such? I have a customer that is making a sculpture from 16 gauge 304.

Welcome to Allmetalshaping Alex!:)

Welcome to the site Alex!.

David

the spheres from that Google search are made from 2 mm t316l stainless and hydro formed to the final shape, the prefab is patented so im not really allowed to discuss our methods to much but a company called http://www.dishedends.com.au/ have a photo of a sphere under construction. this is not our method. it can also be done like a deflated soccer ball with all the hexagons welded together but must be stretched to a point somewhere between deflated and exploded as they can have around 1000-2500 psi in them

our spheres can be 2-4 mm thick and up to 10mm theoretical and from 200mm dia up to 4000mm dia (the biggest so far) we also do hydro form long radius bends for powder and chunky liquids and torispherical domes for pressure vessels
this is a 3.7 m dia architectural piece we built for a client and now sits in japan
Attachment 11501
this its a 4" 304ss dairy tube "y" piece for milk powder at the local dairy factory, the pattern was drawn on autocad
Attachment 11502
as you can see from the photo our shop isnt very tidy, this is a 6" od long radius bend
Attachment 11503

Wow, that is some interesting stuff on the web site you posted:

http://www.dishedends.com.au/facilities.htm

Welcome to the site Alex! The website highlights some very cool work.

Regards,

Hi Guys

thanks for the welcome.

our company is quite small and doesn't have a website yet, we have similar equipment and capacity to these guys buy we service our national market.

the spheres and hydro-forming are my bosses pet project

if you guys want ill post some more pics

cheers guys