Trumpf 3000R CNC punch press in action
Trumpf 3000R CNC punch press producing formed tabs
We can always form location tabs, earth tabs and locating fingers for assembly work using our fly presses. We often do this to trial a design idea or for projects that don’t have the volumes to justify special CNC tooling. In this case the project had enough volume and repeated regularly to justify spending some money on tooling saving on each part and more than paying back the cost of the tooling within months. The punch press also punched all the other holes and outer profile using standard tooling producing the parts ready for bending up on our Edwards Pearson CNC press brakes.
CNC punched nest of aluminium lighting gear trays
CNC punched nest of sheet metal
The CNC punched nest is created by following the program within our Radan software. The holes are punched in first followed by the outer rectangular profile (which is created with overlapping hits of 70mm x 5mm tooling) and finally the upform tabs are pressed into the sheet aluminium.
CNC formed tabs in aluminium sheet metal
Forming tabs with CNC punch press tooling
Once a shape has been CNC punched out it frees the final tab up to be formed up from the sheet metal. In this case the forming tool produce 2 tabs at the same time saving time in the cycle of the machine and money. It so happens that on this project these gear trays are required in sufficient numbers and repeat regularly to not only justify the cost of the CNC form tooling but having a single hit punch tool which again saves time and money when processing hundreds of gear trays at a time.