Published on: 06 October 2025

Grinding and rolling direction in Sophia®

Happy Feature Friday!

In this edition, we cover the ‘Setting the grinding and rolling direction’ feature in Sophia® in greater depth. We explain why this is useful and show you how to use it.

Why should you set the grinding direction?

This is generally done for aesthetic reasons.

The grinding direction is the direction in which the surface of the metal is treated with an abrasive process (e.g. grinding or brushing). This direction is often visible as a pattern of lines, as with brushed stainless steel, for example. By giving each part the same grinding direction, the pattern of lines is the same for each part, which makes your production as a whole visually consistent.

polished stainless steel

Why should you set the rolling direction?

This is generally done to ensure the quality of your part.

To explain how this works, we will begin by explaining what the rolling direction is and what exactly happens to the metal when it is rolled.

When sheet metal is transported, it is often rolled into large coils. When it reaches its destination, the coils are rolled out and passed through rollers to produce large, flat sheets. The sheet metal is then cut into pieces with smaller dimensions that fit in laser cutting machines, for example.

We refer to the direction in which the sheet metal passes through the rollers as the rolling direction.

The rolling process stretches the metal. This results in a structure with elongated grains in the rolling direction. This can affect how the part is processed with laser cutting and sheet metal bending.

Effect of the rolling direction on laser cutting

The rolling direction can affect the accuracy of laser cutting. If we cut a long (and most of all a thin) part in parallel to the rolling direction, there is a greater risk of deformation. This is because even though the sheet has been rolled flat, it will have the tendency to roll up again. This leads to stress in the sheet metal, which can be released when long and/or thin parts are cut. This can affect the accuracy of the laser cutting process.

Effect of the rolling direction on bending

When we bend sheet metal, the rolling direction can affect the strength of the bend. If we bend a piece of sheet metal in parallel to the elongated grains that are formed by the rolling process, the metal will be more likely to crack than if we bend the sheet perpendicular to those grains. You can read more about this in our blog post on the bend radius of sheet metal.

To ensure the quality of your parts and depending on your wishes, it may be advisable to set the rolling direction.

Setting the grinding and rolling direction in Sophia®

You can easily set the grinding and rolling direction while configuring your product. This can be done in all views (3D, list and product).

Once you have selected a material and thickness, one of the following settings will be selected as standard in the drop-down menu:

None
X direction
Y direction

With ground or brushed materials, ‘X direction’ or ‘Y direction’ is selected as standard. With all other materials, ‘None’ will be selected.

You can change this setting.

This can be done by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting the desired grinding and rolling direction.

set grinding rolling direction

In the 3D and product view, you will now see an orange arrow indicating the grinding and rolling direction. This allows you to check that the correct direction has been selected.

We advise you to always check this!

If the arrow is not pointing in the correct direction, adjust the origin in your drawing and upload it again in Sophia®.

The selected grinding and rolling direction ultimately determines how we nest the part in the sheet and cut it out. It may be that your part is rotated 180 degrees to ensure optimal nesting and thus to reduce waste. This rotation does not affect the grinding pattern, unless the part is directly illuminated.

Do you have any questions about the grinding and rolling direction?

We have written this Feature Friday to make working with Sophia® even easier and more efficient. Thanks for your time and see you next Feature Friday. If you have any comments or questions, please contact us.