Hi all,
I’ve already discovered and fixed the problem but am writing this post with the sequence of events that lead to this problem in case someone else hits this and this can save them some time.
The problem:
While running a program, jogging to safe position before clamping jogs the punch too low, below the top plate of the die. Also…when re-homing the machine to get the ram back up out of the die, at the upper range of the homing stroke the ram plate stops but the hydraulic cylinders keep moving, and make a “different” sound as the move.
The Cause
I’m using Extreme Goosneck punches, and the gooseneck is facing toward the back of the machine. I had them slid all the way to the right side of the punch channel. The far right side of the punch was hitting against the machine frame causing the ram to stop in the homing stroke.
The Fix
Shift the punches over about 3/4” so they clear the machine frame.
Post Mortem
Because the homing stroke was stopping short, the starting position of the ram was too low, and when the machine jogs to its safety position before clamp phase, it goes to far.
How I Got Here (Optional reading)
I programmed multiple bends to form a pan from .090” 5052 aluminum. The pan will be 2.5” deep with 3/4” external mounting flanges and internal flanges for riveting the corners. The corner flanges are bent first, then the long side of the 2.5” pan.
After the first 2.5” bend I struggled to get the work piece out of the tooling, so I edited the bend entering 2” in the “Additional Retract After Bend” field and saved the bend.
I then bent the opposite side of the pan, the 2” retract worked perfectly, I was able to remove the workpiece without removing all the dies from underneath. So far so good.
I then move on to the 3/4” flange bend (which does NOT have the additional retract setting). There was a pause between the last bend and this bend, and the machine forced me to start the program over, so I did, and started at the 3/4” bend…
Holding the green buttons to jog the ram to safe position, the ram moved all the way down into the die, beyond the clamping position. In order to get the ram back up I have to cancel the program and re-home the machine, and because of the tooling obstruction described above, the ram didn’t raise to it’s full homing range, though the machine indicates normal position (which in itself seems like a bug that should be addressed).
In summary, because I’m new to this machine, and trying things for the first time, setting the Additional Retract After Bend setting then having something weird happen after it served as a huge red herring that took attention off the mechanical obstruction of having the punches too close to the edge…which is also a newb mistake.
Hope this helps someone else!
Cheers,
Paul