Imagine you have a forming department with new press brakes, a CNC folder with a bidirectional folding beam, and a CNC panel bender. You recently sold your old press brakes, mainly because they were past their useful life. Old controllers made operating them difficult, and significant ram upset caused their beds to bow. Repairing that “old iron” just didn’t make economic sense.
The strategy works, at least at first. The new press brakes with multiaxis backgauges and modern tooling bend the most complex jobs quickly and easily. But then you notice something: New press brakes with touchscreen controls and umpteen-axis backgauges are now being tied up with work that just needs a simple 90-degree bend.
As Flamholz explained, this scenario could benefit from a lesser-known press brake alternative: the horizontal bending machine. Picture a press brake tool and die, but on its side. The operator calls up a program, inserts the punch and die, places the blank against a gauge (similar to a backgauge finger, just positioned to the side of the bend area), then initiates the bend cycle.
These machines accept a variety of press brake tool and die sets, including certain European- and American-style segmented tools that can be adapted for horizontal bending. Tangs on the punches and dies seat into the machine’s toolholders just as they would on a press brake. They also have wheel tools and other special tooling for making large-radius bends and specialty parts.
The hydraulic cylinder pushes the tool directly, with the largest machines able to apply more than 80 tons of force. Because bend lengths are short and force is applied from the center, “you don’t need to deal with deflection or compensation through crowning, as you do with a typical press brake,” Flamholz said.
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