How to Select Press Brake Tooling?

Press brake tooling is a tool for press brake bending machine to form and process sheet metal. This tool is made up of various parts. Different molds are made up of different parts. It mainly realizes the processing of the shape of the object through the change of the physical state of the formed material. A tool for making parts of specific shapes and sizes from billets under bending machine pressure.

Press brake tooling is divided into a press brake bending machine upper punch and lower die, used for sheet metal stamping and separation of the die. The forming mold has a cavity and the separating mold has a cutting edge.

Punch selection rules

For L shapes there are no rules. Almost any punch shape will work. So when selecting punches for a group of parts, you always consider these L-shaped parts last, considering just about any punch shape can handle them.

When bending these L shapes, use a punch that also can bend other parts. Remember, when you select press brake tooling, less is always best—not just to minimize tooling cost, but also to reduce setup time by changing tools.

From bellow picture, you can see, for J shapes if the small up-leg is shorter than the bottom leg, any punch shape is OK(left side of the picture). If the small up-leg is longer than the bottom leg, you need to use gooseneck punch(right side of the picture). So the punch selection rules are considering workpiece interference.

lower die opening selection rules

When choose the V opening, you must hear the 8x rule. Generally, we use the V opening that’s eight times the material thickness.

Well, “8x” is only a label, and the value “8” can be changed as the material thickness. Sometimes we use 6x material thickness, other times 10x or 12x. Because we also need to consider about different materials of the sheet.

For our press brake bending machine, we have two kinds of standard lower die, one is Two-Way Self-Centring V Dies, and the other is Multi-V Dies.

1. Two-Way Self-Centring V Dies

Two-way Self-Centring V Dies have two successive V (typically of different angles and/or widths).  The center of this die is fixed, so when you change the V, you no need to it take time to find the centerline. But only if the thickness range of steel plates you need to bend is not large you can choose this die.

2. Multi-V Dies

Also quite self-explanatory, multi-V dies consist of multiple different V that are spread across their four sides. Multi-V dies are your most versatile solution in today’s demanding market. These dies consist of more than multiple openings that can be utilized for a wide range of applications.

ZYMT is the China top 5 press brake manufacturers, providing professional press brake bending machine knowledge and sheet metal bending machine with high-quality press brake tooling.  If you have any needs, contact us!