Monday, February 24th, 2014
CNC punching brackets
These Zintec brackets are typical of the sheet metal work that can be produced on a CNC punch press. If you click on the image you can see the detail of the tooling used to create the final component. By building up the use of squares, rectangles, obround slots, circles and radiused tools the final component profile can be produced. The components are left with small corner tags uncut so that they stay in the sheet nest at the end of the CNC punching process. They can then be broken out of the sheet and de-burred if needed. These parts could equally been laser cut and the final component would have been the same except that the laser cut edges would have shown no signs of CNC punch nibbling but may have had some heat marks on the edges.
CNC punching front panels
These sheet metal front panels have been manufactured using a CNC punching program on one of our Trumpf CNC punch presses. The components have a simple outer profile of a rectangle so lend themselves to being common line cut. This is a process where the width of the cutting tool, in this case 5mm, is used to separate the left hand side of one part from the right hand side of its neighbour. So the slitting tool is cutting both edges of the two components at the same time. This technique saves time in processing the parts and enables us to produce more from a sheet of metal saving you money. These parts could have been laser cut but they were faster on the punch presses as all the holes were single hits with standard tooling.
CNC punching lighting gear boxes
One of the great advantages of using CNC punch presses to produce sheet metal components such as these galvanised mild steel gear boxes for lighting fittings is the ability to create 3 dimensional forms within the sheet metal. Where the laser cutter head never touches the sheet metal the CNC punch press does with every cutting operation. This can be used not only to pierce holes but to press in 3 dimensional forms. In this component simple pressed dimples are used to create feet to allow an air flow around the box to help the electrical components inside keep cooler with the need for forced cooling. The same CNC punching action can be used to press in ventilation louvres, self tapping taptite screw thread forms, electrical knockouts, formed countersinks; in fact the list is almost limitless. If you want to know more please give us a call and we will be happy to talk through yuor needs and see whether there is a solution that can easily be implemented using a CNC punch press form tool.
Laser cutting mild steel
Common line cutting is a technique that can be employed when laser cutting sheet metal work. These mild steel brackets have been laser cut with only the laser beam width separating them. Again, as with CNC punching this helps to reduce time and saves money on material but with laser cutting it also helps to save the cost of electricity and gas usage so it can be a powerful technique to keep component costs down. We are always looking for ways to produce work quicker to save you money. These parts were CNC punched but we now process them no the laser cutter as it removed the need for a de-burring operation after CNC punching.
Laser cutting chassis components
These mild steel components which are used as chassis plates for light fittings used to be CNC punched but we have now moved them onto our Trumpf 3030 3KW fibre laser. The laser cut parts can be fitted closer together to save material costs and again have some parts of their profile common line cut. They are much easier for us to program as a laser cut part than CNC punching which can be an advantage if we have lots of parts to program for a project and we can fit them all onto one sheet.
Whether we are using CNC punching or CNC laser cutting we will be able to help you and decide which process will suit your sheet metal project to produce the best quality of part at the most competitive price.
