Electric metal shears/nibbler

[anto44]

I got this from Lidl or Aldi for about £20, ok for thin steel, but most of the time I just use a 1mm cutting disc.

I bought one of them as well and am seriously impressed with it for the price. I tried it on some 2mm steel and it flew through it which I wasn't expecting it to. I only paid €14.99 for mine so at that price you could just throw it away when the blades are blunt. I'm sorry I didn't by more of them.

 

[hotrodder]

While a decent jigsaw is versatile they're 'kin noisy for thin sheet unless you clamp some sacrificial wood to the sheet to stop it from bouncing around and impersonating a drum. Relatively slow and messy too + whatever you're cutting gets scratched beyond recognition

Leccy or air shears (decent quality ones at least) are great but only quiet compared compared to angle grinders and the like. The 3 bladed designs like in the vid don't like cutting smaller radii, 2 bladed designs improve on that (still not as tight radii as nibblers or plasma cutters though) but tend to distort the waste side of the cut some. 3 bladed shears leave zero distortion as they cut a thin strip out which they can also get tangled up in... interupted cuts like an inside corner for example unless you drill/punch holes first and cut to them

There are various different manual bench shears about which are silent and mess free, most* styles are shown in the link including ratcheting disc types (typically 16swg/1.5mm capacity in mild steel), regular bench shears (upto pretty thick capacity, not so good at curved cuts) and throatless shears (a 'twisted' table which makes them way better at curved cuts but at the expense of capacity) google pics All of them will distort the waste side of the cut some and you generally get what you pay for. For example the standard for throatless shears is the origional Beverly shear which are eyewateringly spendy but built to last several lifetimes. The cheapnese copies of it can need a fair bit fettling to cut cleanly instead of folding stuff IME and once you've got 'em working well it's very easy to chip the micky mouse blades

* Gabro 2m2 is the exception, it's a 3 blade bench shear/notcher that's great for notching stuff and zero distortion straight cuts but sucks at everything else

 

[Chris Stevens]

I have found the Record disc type sheet metal cutter is superior to all other options in most situations, with the big advantage you can sometimes find them new for about £40. Mate of mine has been using one to cut out chain-guards for maybe 30 years and its still going strong. For almost all home workshop use a Record and a couple of pairs of good quality aviation snips are all that you would need.