Dear Friends,

I am Hussain from India and I have started working at a firm that manufactures desktop 3D printers. I have recently been tasked to build the outer frames of a machine using sheet metal. I have a few a few constraints in doing so.

I need to using a laser cutting process to cut the sheets and then bend them using a CNC brake press. I then use fastners to bolt together all the sheets. Since we are trying to get the metal enclosure to be airtight we are planning to move away from fastners and use welding. I have many issues with precision of the final assembly. I wonder how large companies make precise CNC laser cutters and 5 Axis machines with such high precision.

I also feel that if we pursue welding of frames we would need to use special welding fixtures that will be expensive. I also tried contacting a manufacturer who does base frame machining for large machines and he told me that the closest tolerance that he can achieve is around 2mm which is quite high for a small desktop machine. 

I would like to know if there are any manufacturing processes that I should look into for doing such a project. Are there any resources that I need to study, could someone point me in the right direction, if you were in my situation what would you do ?. 

Thanks

Hussain