Product category:
CNC punching and profiling
News Release from: Press and Shear Machinery | Subject: Press brakes
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 15 October 2004
New press brake costs less than a used
machine
Searle Manufacturing has been systematically replacing six press brakes in the standard products manufacturing cell at its Fareham factory.
Serving the refrigeration and air conditioning industry, Searle Manufacturing has since 1921 been a leading UK producer of heat exchange products, including coolers, condensers and coils, half of which are exported, mainly to Europe Applications include food storage and distribution centres, supermarket cabinets and cold rooms, large-scale food freezing plant, beer cellars, and air-conditioning equipment for offices and public buildings
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 9 Jul 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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Acquisition of a Finnish-built CNC turret punch press and a pair of large-capacity press brakes has paid off handsomely for an Essex-based sheet metal work fabricator.
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The recent installation of a highly productive CNC turret punch press at a subcontractor caused a shortfall in pressbrake capacity that was quickly rectified.
As part of a programme of continuing improvement in production processes, the company has been systematically replacing six press brakes in the standard products manufacturing cell at its Fareham, Hampshire factory.
Latest to be installed is a Baykal APHS 3106x120 CNC press brake, built in Turkey and marketed in the UK through Press and Shear Machinery.
Components for thousands of products are produced in the press section, mainly from 1 mm to 1.5 mm gauge galvanised steel but also from stainless steel and aluminium up to 3 mm, in batches of between 5- and 100-off.
Further reading
CNC and NC press brakes are robustly built
Robustly built, NC and CNC press brakes are economically priced, yet incorporate good quality component parts and include special configurations for bending up to 4.4m length.
Turret punch press offers indexable up-forming
A 300kN turret punch press has an up-forming option that offers a combination of conventional up-forming, a new, indexable up-forming station, and the possibility of using existing tooling.
Fast CNC turret punch press makes its debut
A turret punch press with higher acceleration and faster sheet positioning, will be shown at MACH 2006, along with CNC press brakes and an inspection machine for checking flat products.
There are currently over 60,000 varieties of platework going through the section and the number rises all the time.
Searle previously subcontracted work out during the busy summer months but last year decided to bring all production in-house.
The manufacturer invested in an additional turret punch press, but this meant that it was generating flat stock faster than it could be folded.
Prime culprit was an NC press brake that has now been replaced.
The 11-year-old model did not incorporate a powered backstop, so manual set-up for each new batch was slow.
Neither did it have a crowning facility, essential for compensating for machine deflection when bending up to 3 metre long plates.
In practice, therefore, the machine was rarely employed for this type of work, and if it occasionally was, recourse was made to sticking adhesive tape on the top blade to provide the compensation.
Searle's production engineering manager, Russell Smith, set about replacing the press brake and went first to see a number of second-hand machines.
"I was horrified at the poor quality and condition of the equipment I was offered at what were really quite high prices," he said.
"So I decided to research new press brakes and identified one machine that looked good value, except that when you put on all the extras, the price rapidly increased." Then he noticed a magazine article on the Baykal range, which ultimately led to the purchase of a 3m long, 1200 kN capacity model in April 2004.
"It is a high spec machine with CNC backstop and crowning at a very good all-in price," affirmed Mr Smith.
"I could not even find a decent second-hand machine of equivalent specification for the same money." The APHS also includes electronic synchronisation of the two cylinders that power the down-stroking bending beam, and linear scales for stroke depth measurement.
All programs for the machine are written on the shop floor at the Delem control from drawings, rather than being downloaded from Searle's CAD/CAM system.
This is because the majority of components require only simple folds and in any case, the varied throughput of standard products would tie up the CAD/CAM resource, which is devoted to more complex work and custom-built products. Request a free brochure from Press and Shear Machinery ...
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