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If you will be setting up a manufacturing facility that will specialise in sheet metal fabrication, you may find these two tips to be helpful.

Create as much distance as possible between the 'pedestrian' areas and dangerous equipment

The process of fabricating sheet metal necessitates the use of a wide variety of hazardous machinery. For example, your facility will probably feature laser equipment to cut the sheet metal, welding equipment to join together separate pieces of metal and forklifts to transport the sheet metal from one processing area to another.

All of this machinery is very powerful and could potentially injure the employees who walk around your facility. If, for example, a staff member walks by a welding machine whilst it is in operation, the sparks from it could injure their eyes or burn their skin if they get too close to it. Likewise, if a staff member walks by a moving forklift, they could be hit by the equipment itself or be struck by any sheet metal that falls off its forks.

To minimise the chance of this happening in your facility, you should design the layout in such a way that this machinery is positioned as far away as possible from the areas that employees will be walking around in during the course of a typical workday. Creating separate rooms or separate pathways for this machinery will reduce the frequency with which pedestrians in your facility end up coming into contact with these potentially hazardous pieces of equipment.

Take steps to keep moisture at bay

If some of the sheet metal products you intend to make are made from metals that rust when they are exposed to water, then it is crucial to ensure that your facility is designed in a way that will protect these metal products from moisture.

There are several ways to do this. Firstly, you should ensure that the roof of the facility is made from robust materials that won't deteriorate and allow rainwater to leak into your building and drip onto your moisture-sensitive sheet metal.

Secondly, you should have the entire building damp-proofed. This will ensure that you won't have to worry about damp, and the condensation that forms as a result of it, damaging the sheet metal products you produce and store in the facility.  

Thirdly, if the moisture-sensitive metal products will be stored in a specific area of your facility for more than a few days at a time, you should keep a heavy-duty commercial dehumidifier running in this storage area at all times, to prevent humidity from harming these products.