The sheet metal bending industry often encounters these two types of equipment: CNC bending machine and CNC folding machine. So, what’s the difference between them? How to choose to use them? First, briefly summarize the main features of the two:
CNC bending machine: The upper and lower molds are respectively fixed on the upper and lower worktables of the bending machine, and the relative movement of the hydraulically driven worktable is combined with the shape of the upper and lower molds to realize the bending and forming of the plate.
CNC folding machine: The motor drives the upper slider to compress the sheet, and the hemming beam rotates from bottom to top, thereby driving the sheet to be bent into shape.
In terms of sheet forming, the CNC bending machine and the CNC folding machine are compared from the following six aspects:
1. The forming principle is different
Bending machine – control the bending angle by controlling the amount of pressure on the upper knife. When bending the short side, the operator needs to hold up most of the external material. When bending large workpieces, two or more More employee collaboration.
Folding machine – After the plate is laid flat on the worktable, the edge holder is pressed down to fix the plate, and the edge holder is turned up and down to achieve hemming. In all hemming processes of one edge, manual participation is no longer required. Positioning and auxiliary turning and positioning work.
2. Different bending accuracy
Bending machine – the dimensional accuracy of the control is the dimensional accuracy of the short side of the back gauge positioning. After the bending is completed, the final error accumulates to the inner hollow size. At the same time, the bending angle is controlled by the lower pressure of the upper die. This angle is related to the thickness of the material.
Folding machine – The dimensional accuracy of the control is that after the first hemming is completed, the first edge is used as the positioning reference. The final controlled size is exactly the inner hollow size required by the customer, and the bending angle is directly controlled by the flanging angle , Has nothing to do with the thickness of the material.
3. Scratch damage to the surface of the material
Bending machine – When working, the material will move relative to the lower die, leaving indentations without surface protection. When bending large workpieces, it needs to be turned and moved many times, and scratches will inevitably occur in the process.
Folding machine – When working, the blank holder and hemming beam cutter do not move relative to the material, thus completely avoiding surface damage. When large workpieces are bent, because the plates are processed flat, all processing on one side of the workpiece can be completed at one time positioning, completely avoiding surface damage.
4. The requirements of workers' technical level are different
Bending machine – The technical level of the bending workers is relatively higher.
Folding machine – Programming can be achieved intuitively by drawing with fingers, or the engineer can use software to achieve offline programming and use USB or network connection to import the processing program. After the programming is completed, the main work of the worker becomes simple loading and unloading Work without skilled bending workers.
5. Tool configuration
Bending machine – products with different thicknesses and shapes require different upper and lower molds. When realizing some special bending (such as arc) requirements, it is necessary to replace the tool or transfer to another machine tool to achieve this, increasing the transfer and transfer of semi-finished products. Temporary work.
Folding machine – By configuring a rotatable blank holder beam and installing two sets of blank holder tools at the same time, a single station can complete all the bending procedures. For arc bending or other special bending requirements, there is basically no need to replace the tools, just It can be fully realized by making changes in the program.
6. Tool life
Bending machine – due to the relative movement of the workpiece in the die, the tool will wear out and need to be maintained or replaced.
Folding machine – basically avoids the relative movement between the material and the tool, the tool is almost free from wear for a long time, and the tool life is greatly extended.
7. Drive system
Bending machine – hydraulically driven, which brings more maintenance work and is easily affected by environmental factors.
Folding machine – adopts all-electric drive design, which reduces maintenance workload and has nothing to do with the use environment, thereby achieving higher bending accuracy.
8. Disadvantages of folding machine
- Due to the different bending principles, the R angle of the folding machine is larger than that of the bending machine;
- Due to the limitation of the support table, the workpiece that is turned down on both sides cannot be processed;
- The size of the workpiece is limited by the compression area of the upper die, and the workpiece smaller than the size of the compression area cannot be processed;
- The efficiency is not as high as the bending machine;
- Due to the structural characteristics of the bending machine and the diversity of molds, some complex shapes can be simply realized by the bending machine. Relatively speaking, the flexibility of the folding machine is poor;
- Folding machines are currently widely used in Europe and the United States. We are influenced by traditional Japanese processing concepts and generally use bending processing. There is no better use of folding machines.
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