Precision Ground Press Brake Tooling
When you are consider purchasing a hydraulic press brake. With that purchase comes the need to specify and select tooling, what kind of tooling system suitable for your current sheet metal bending projects?
First of all, you need to consider the press brake type, NC torsion bar press brake can bending some basic sheet profiles with less tools changing bending, normally 3-4 bends with mass production; CNC Press brakes standard working with CNC computer bending software system, operator maybe just need one set of basic press brake tools can finish almost all bending profiles, sometimes for bumping forming parts. Obviously, CNC Press brakes will increase your bending productivity and bending precision, forsure the purchasing cost of CNC Press brake is much higher than NC Torsion bar press brakes, CNC press brakes have less maintenance, short down time, high bending precision and fast bending speed, which NC torsion bar can not compare.
Second, you need to consider tooling clamps type, standard Amada-Promecam universal clamps or Wila-Trumpf New Standard Tooling System,that's hydraulic upper clamps for top punches. The push-button Wila-American-style tooling that we are considering has a groove in the tang that would self-seat like the New Standard tools.
Are they light-gauge materials with tight tolerances, heaver plate, or both? Second, is your new machine specifically designed for the New Standard (Wila-TRUMPF) tooling?
Just to clarify some terms, modern press brake tools are identified by their manufacturing method—precision-ground or planed—as well as by the tool profile, including the shape of the tangs and mechanisms used to seat and retain them in the holder—American, European, and New Standard. Tools with American-style tangs have traditionally been planed, so you’ll often hear them referred to as American planed tools. Today, however, precision-ground tools are available with American-style tangs.
Now that you have a new CNC press brake, but you need to select press brake tooling. Again, the type of press brake you have will determine your press brakes tools choice, especially if your cnc press brake was designed for a specific tool style or forming special profiles.
When choosing between traditional planer and precision-ground New Standard tools, know that each has its place in the industry, and both have their pluses and minuses.
Wila-Trumpf New Standard Style Pressbrake Tools
Wila New Standard style of press brake tooling works well with high-precision, tight-tolerance parts, especially when used in a press brake designed specifically for that style of tooling. The correct press brake combined with New Standard tooling makes setups a breeze as they hold parallelism between the bed and ram or the punch and die perfectly. They also automatically hold the tooling perfectly centered in Tx and Ty.
The New Standard style can be purchased in sectionalized toolsets. These allow for the assembly of the tools to any length required without the need to cut the tooling itself. New Standard tools also are self-seating when used in conjunction with the proper auto-clamping system.
Features of Wila New Standard Tooling ensure the self-seating, self-centering tooling makes it very difficult to “cheat” a bend, such as offsetting the die slightly to catch a small flange. While it’s not always the best of ideas to offset a toolset, the reality of forming on a press brake is that occasionally it becomes necessary to catch the flange and complete the bend. Second, New Standard tools cost more than traditional planer-style tools.
Traditional press brake bending tools have advantage and disadvantage, First standard tools less expensive than the New Standard Tools, and they’re well-suited to heavy bending and bottoming forming parts.
Rather than being ground toward a center point like precision-ground tooling, standarda tools are cut from an X-Y reference coordinate. When combining the tooling into different lengths, the tooling must be kept facing the same direction. Whichever surface you choose to define as the “front” must remain consistent. If you have one section placed opposite the other, the tools will not align properly since you will have moved the reference to the opposite side.
When cutting press brake bending tools to length, keep them in the same order. When you need to create a longer punch length, mate the same two pieces at the same cut with the tools facing the same direction. For the best results, mark each cut you make on one face of the tool: 1 mates with 1, 2 mates with 2, and so on. When you see the numbers aligned. you’ll know you’ve mated the tools in the correct order and orientation.
If you’re forming in a structural application, you’re probably not bottoming. The forces required for that would be immense. As to which style of tooling is best suited for structural part forming, the New Standard or traditional planer, it is not so much the tooling design or type as it is the punch nose radius that matters.
You do not want the relationship between the punch nose radius and the material to become sharp.
If your bend becomes sharp and creates a crease along the bend line, you will add a lot of unnecessary angle variation. Bend angle variation affects the flange dimension as well. A good rule of thumb when forming steel is to keep the punch radius to a value greater than 63% of the material thickness.
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