Laser Cutting and Folding
The frame starts as flat 1.2 mm sheet. It is laser cut, then folded into a closed box section. That is why the sightline is 18 mm instead of the 30 mm an aluminium extrusion needs — there is no die to design around.
Cut, then folded — why the order matters
Laser cutting gives a clean edge with no tooling cost per profile, so a one-off width is the same cost as a standard one. That is the whole reason this product can be made to measure without a size chart.
Folding then turns the flat blank into a closed section. A closed section resists twisting, which matters on a 3,200 mm door leaf, and it gives a corner that can be welded and polished instead of capped.
| Step | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Nesting and cutting | Sheet nested to minimise waste, laser cut | Edge quality, no tooling cost per size |
| Deburring | Edge dressed before folding | A burr becomes a crack at the fold line |
| Folding | Air bending on a press brake, per-profile tooling | The 18 mm sightline and the closed corner |
| Check | Square and dimension check against the drawing | A 1 mm error here is 4 mm at the far end of a 4 m run |
Where tolerance goes, and where it does not
Nothing is perfectly square, so the question is where the error is allowed to live. We allow it in the scribe — the 40 mm return that meets the plaster — and never in the frame.
That is why a cabinet can sit in a wall that is 20 mm out and still read as flush: the wall is crooked, the frame is not, and the difference is absorbed out of sight.
Why not aluminium
An extrusion is cheap per metre and identical every time, which is why most of the market uses it. It also cannot be made thinner than the die allows, it needs a cover cap at the joint, and it dents rather than bends.
For a wine cabinet the frame is the product. Eighteen millimetres of stainless around a full-height glass door is a different object from forty millimetres of aluminium.
The detail behind the text
From this page to a delivered cabinet
- Made in
- Shunde, Foshan, China — frame, finish and assembly in one workshop
- Frame
- 18 mm stainless sightline, folded to the measured wall
- Materials
- Stainless steel, tempered or low-E glass, felt-lined bottle cradle
- Cooling
- Embraco compressor, 110 V / 60 Hz for the US, 220–240 V elsewhere
- Production
- 30 to 40 days after the 50% production deposit, quoted per project
- Delivery
- Crated, collected by your forwarder, with a numbered setting-out drawing
- Installation
- By your fitter, to our drawing; we dry-fit and inspect before crating
The questions that come up before an order
Can you make a frame thinner than 18 mm?
Not in a structural frame that carries a glass door. Below 18 mm the fold radii start to collide and the section loses stiffness.
What is the largest single panel?
Up to 3,200 mm in height per module, and any width, because the width is modules joined on a shared mullion.
How flat is a large stainless panel?
Flat enough that a reflection does not wave. On very large panels we add a folded stiffener behind, which is a drawing decision, not an extra.
Send the wall and the bottle count
Three photographs and a tape measure is enough for a scheme, a finish direction and a price. The drawing fee covers the CAD and the visuals.