What are the fundamentals of press brake tooling?

If you are bending or shaping metal, press brake tooling plays a very important role. Press brake tools are used in conjunction with a press brake for bending sheet metal into specific shapes using the matching punch and die and applying significant force. Here is a closer look at the fundamentals of press brake tooling which may help you utilize correctly and determine which one is right for your application.

The Content list:

1/ Punches and dies

2/ What happens when metal bends

3/ The bending methods

Punches and dies

Top tools are called punches and they also work together with different bottom dies when making each product. The shape of those tools governs in part how bending takes place. Conventional punches have a punch tip radius and a punch angle. The lower V die has a die opening. The angle of that V is the die angle, and the transition into that V opening is called the die shoulder radius. The punch angle shouldn’t be larger than the die angle.

What happens when metal bends

When a press brake bends, the metal elongates ever so slightly. This has to do with the nature of compression and expansion on the sheet or plate as it is bent. Near the outside of the bend you get an expansion, near the inside you get compression, and the interaction of these forces pulls the neutral axis – the boundary between compression and expansion – toward the inside bend radius. Press brake pros define that shift as the K-factor, and it’s that shift that causes metal to elongate, or to grow.

The bending methods

Press brake bending falls into two basic categories with several compromise options. The first is the foundation for all press brake work and is called air bending. The second type is called bottom bending.

1/ Air bending. Most shops these days perform air bending, sometimes called air forming. With this method, the die opens, not the punch tip radius, determines the inside bend radius. The tip of the top forces the part to be formed into the V-shaped lower die. When the punch has penetrated deep enough into the lower die to produce the required angle, the punch is returned to the top of the stroke releasing the now formed part. When the part is released, the two legs of the newly formed part will spring back somewhat until the stresses in the formed part are balanced.

2/ Bottom bending. If you work at a general fabricator on an old press brake, you might be bottoming. It might be selected to obtain better angular consistency or to compensate for repeatability or deflection problems of the press brake. The forming method has four different definitions depending on the tooling design and how it is used during the forming cycle. Any simple straight line forming where the formed part touches the sloping V section, in addition to the corners of the V opening, is no longer an air bend.

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