CNC punching sheet metal and recycling waste to be used again.
When we are CNC punching sheet metal components we produce a certain amount of waste metal. This waste metal can be in the form of metal “slugs”, the small sheet metal pieces that are punched down the tool die with each cycle of the punch press ram. The slugs can be tiny nibbled parts when the sheet is moved only a small distance with each punch cycle or complete pieces of metal where a hit is on its own e.g. a large hole. The nibbled and single hit slugs are sucked away from the sheet surface after passing through the bottom die by a vacuum that is formed on the Trumpf CNC punch press. The slugs are then ejected into a collecting bin underneath the machine. These bins can be changed over to collect different materials depending on the job being run. We also have wast materials which are the outside edges of the metal sheet after all the components have been removed. This nest skeleton can be folded up and put in our scrap bins waiting for recycling. With modern sheet metal processing software like Radan we manage to keep this waste area to a minimum and will often combine different components on the same sheet to get the highest possible material yield.
The materials we run are separated into copeer, brass, stainless steel, aluminium alloys and (ferrous) steel based products e.g. CR4, galv and zintec. By separating out the different metal grades they can easily be processed at the metal dealers and recycled back into fresh sheet metal ready for us to process again.
To view more information on Trumpf CNC punch presses in action take a look at our plant web page.