I came across video of a fab shop showing some tooling they made. Maybe we can use this topic to share other tooling ideas as we learn on the Titan 25T.
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We’ve used our CNC plasma tables to make laminated tooling to bend on Titan. It works perfectly!
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I’ve seen videos of people using 3D printers to create tooling for their press. It seems to work but starts to show wear after about 100 uses. Not bad for a short runs.
Thanks for posting this, love that curved aluminum part, wish I had more time to design stuff like that!
What is the paper/ plastic material being used? I know it’s purpose, just wondering what the material is as it looks like it will work more than just one use
If you’re talking about the videos, those are steel plate pieces held together with all-thread. Nothing 3d printed in the videos, but it’s one of the first fully laminated dies I’ve seen that pivots to be able to overbend a 180° bend, and that’s pretty sweet.
No sir, if you watch the video it looks like they put a sheet of paper or plastic material in the receiver die, then the material and them press it. I was wondering if that material that they put in prior to the aluminum was paper or plastic and if it was something specific
It acts like parchment paper. It is a bit stiffer than wax paper.
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Yes. Here are a couple examples:
…and:
…and:
There are several others. I did not mean to leave anyone out but my post is long enough.
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I use painter’s tape. Some people use 40 mil plastic sheets. It keeps the surface from being damaged. Well, most of the time.
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I believe this is the image @myfast70 is referring:
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Those are likely urethane sheets to protect the surface of the sheet metal from the laminated die.
Like this.
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Makes sense. Similar to what BigDaddy said.
I am not familiar with that product.
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A place I used to work used it all the time for cosmetic panels we made for combines, and any other press work where the tooling left unacceptable amounts of marking on the material. We had scads of laminated dies there in addition to the large quantity of legit hardened tooling.
Funny enough, I tried using the urethane sheets to see if we could get the same benefits out of it on the 4 roll cnc plate roller I supervised in our department. But because the urethane sheet is so soft it will expand and bunch up as the part moves through the pinch roll and when the creases that makes do finally pass through the punch roll with the material it leaves ghost imprints of the wrinkles on the sheet metal. Basically impossible to see on the raw panel, but once they were powder coated and inspected you could see the ripples. So we went back to just wiping all the rolls down before that job and hitting any burrs on the rolls with a stone to polish them down.
For the tube bending equipment we generally used UHMW polyethylene for dies and guides that we wanted to be non-marking on material.
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