I'm guessing non-marring, good for plastics and SS. Or anytime you don't want carbon steel impregnated. Any other marvelous uses?
I'm guessing non-marring, good for plastics and SS. Or anytime you don't want carbon steel impregnated. Any other marvelous uses?
Went to a shop today, they had lots. With the price of steel the way it is and it getting harder and harder to find good deals. I'm contemplating making quite a collection. Since i'm not doing production work i can't justify the cost of the real stuff just because of wear. Is there anything to avoid making from scratch(welding) Today I saw just about every type of punch / die made from scratch. I'd never seen anybody make a die out of angleiron before.
I've been running press brakes for years. My best advice would be to use common sense.....it'll get you a long way. Homemade punch and dies will work for just about everything, except the long stuff. Welding things together perfectly square tends to get alot tougher after about 3-4 foot long.
What kind of tooling are you looking for? If you have a plasma cutter the options are limitless. You can cut several profiles out of .5 plate and weld them together. Very quick way of building dies.....does get a little on the heavy side though.
Mike
Another thing I forgot to mention. Keep in mind that there is only a certain amount of tonnage that you should subject a homemade die to. It's better to overkill on the construction/material/welding to be on the safe side.
Mike
Hey folks - would appreciate some quick advice. I just realized that my 24" box & pan brake doesn't have sufficient clearance for a few bends I'll need to do (16 gauge sheetmetal) so I'd like to purchase an H-frame hydraulic press with V-dies. I see lots of vendors with the presses, but where the heck do I find dies? I'm just a hobbyist, so I don't imagine some of the companies I found via google (e.g. http://www.midwestpressbrake.com/) would deal with me. I was hoping to see these products in MSC, Enco, etc, but cannot find them. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!
You should check out this article to learn the aluminum press brake toolings used on hydraulic press brake machine.
https://www.machinemfg.com/press-brake-ultimate-guide/