Thin plate refers to a steel plate with a much smaller thickness than its length and width. Its transverse bending resistance is poor, so it is not suitable for the occasion under transverse bending load. The thin plate is metal as far as its material is concerned, but because of its special geometry and thickness is very small, the processing technology of thin plate components has its particularity.

There are three types of processing technologies related to thin plate components:

(1) Blanking: It includes cutting and blanking.

(2) Forming: It includes bending, folding, crimping and deep drawing.

(3) Connection: It includes welding, bonding and so on. The structural design of thin plate members should mainly consider the requirements and characteristics of processing technology.

In addition, attention should be paid to the batch size of components.

Thin plate members are widely used because they have the following advantages:

(1) Easily deformed, so that a variety of components can be manufactured by simple processing technology.

(2) Thin plate components are light in weight.

(3) The small amount of processing, because of the high surface quality of the thin plate, small tolerance of thickness direction dimension, plate surface does not need to be processed.

(4) It is easy to cut and weld and can produce large and complex components.

(5) Shape specification for automatic processing.