Shearing

We use a guillotine shear for shearing steel. The upper blade always remains slanted relative to the lower blade.

Prins Staal has two guillotine shears, one that is 6 metres long and one that is 4 metres long. The material that we shear with these machines can be up to 16 mm thick.

Approximately one-third of the sheet thickness is actually sheared by the machine. The rest of the steel gives way under the pressure without the blade cutting through it. We refer to this as a slip. The pressure exerted by the shear causes the atoms in the steel to glide along each other, resulting in a natural line at which breaking will occur.

Like punching, shearing is a clean form of dividing that does not involve metal removal as such. It is a simple process in which heat does not play a part. The limitations of this sustainable technique relate mainly to the thickness of the material to be sheared and the fact that the shearing can only be done in straight lines.