Commercial Air Filters
Commercial filters come in many shapes and sizes. The filter media is often encapsulated by plastic or metal to give the assembly rigidity. Some commercial air filters are surrounded by frames and others, such as the one depicted here, are supported by two different roll formed shapes called stegs and profiles, which Samson Roll Formed Products company supplies to the manufacturer. This commercial air filter’s assembly consists of seven roll formed stegs and two roll formed profiles. (Please go to the pdf document if you would like to see dimensioned drawings of these parts.)
Roll forming is the manufacturing method of choice for these two metal shapes because the economics of roll forming favor large lot sizes. Because roll form tooling is generally more expensive tooling method relative press braking and extruding processes, roll forming does not compete favorably with these processes at lower volumes, but because the difference in tooling cost becomes moot as the volume increases, the difference in per unit cost among braking and extruding processes increases at an incrementally larger rate per unit.