What sheet metals workers do

- Imagine living and working in either freezing or hot environments. Sheet metal workers provide a variety of work in residential, commercial, retail, medical, laboratory, high-tech, shop, and industrial environments. They make our spaces comfortable and safe and their work beautifies and protects buildings. - We create three dimensional objects from flat sheets of material, metal predominantly. And it can be any type or alloy of metal. We take flat patterns and create three dimensional objects to install. So, in the heating and ventilation side of our industry, the duct work itself is all custom made and designed by engineers predominantly sheet metal workers. We have to install, fabricate and install miles of duct work in commercial buildings. - HVAC sheet metal workers keep buildings heated or cooled and provided with fresh, filtered and conditioned air. - No two are alike. Everything is custom made. We are one of the few crafts that we fabricate everything we install. - [Woman] Architectural sheet metal workers perform ornamental work that beautifies and protects our buildings. - It's the duct work that conveys conditioned air to spaces that we breathe so that we feel a comfortable temperature inside. It's the metal coverings, it's roofing, it's panels on the outside of buildings, it's coping, which is on the edge of buildings, it might be column wraps on the inside of the buildings, it might be in a commercial kitchen, all of the stainless steel that you would see might be a sheet metal worker's craft. - [Woman] All sheet metal specialties take flat sheets of metal and transform them into geometric wonders. - It's kind of like playing origami with metal. And then what we do is take it from the baseline up and through to finished install with any piece of metal, any 3D object. Along the way we might be operating with different pieces of equipment in order to form that metal. We might be welding on it, we might be putting various seams or locks or joints together in order to assemble something into a finished product. - [Woman] Because of sheet metal workers we can conveniently adjust the comfort of our home, breathe clean air, and enjoy the aesthetics of the ornamental work that they perform. - So, what you're doing is you're building the foundation, you're erecting the walls, and that's kind of the skeletal structure of the building but there's so much more going on. There's going to be electrical work, there's going to be respiratory works, that's the things that we breathe, right. There's going to be lighting so that we can see. There's going to be all sorts of trades doing their work inside a building and coordinating that work together in order to create an organism that's functioning, beautiful, and livable at the end of it. - If working with metal to build complex systems that keep our communities healthy and comfortable sounds appealing to you, be sure to watch our content on LinkedIn Learning on sheet metal workers.