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I need a cnc press brake.

kpotter

Diamond
Joined
Apr 30, 2001
Location
tucson arizona usa
We are looking for a new or mint condition cnc press brake. I have been looking at all the usual ones, Cincinnati, amada, trumph. I need a 4ft 60 ton or more. I anyone have experience with these. We produce our own products so this will be for production use.
 
We are looking for a new or mint condition cnc press brake. I have been looking at all the usual ones, Cincinnati, amada, trumph. I need a 4ft 60 ton or more. I anyone have experience with these. We produce our own products so this will be for production use.
In my experience Amada go and go without many dramas even 30yr old ones, Trumpf are usually a bit faster and have more advanced tech but tend to have more breakdowns, especially the newer ones.
 
In my experience Amada go and go without many dramas even 30yr old ones, Trumpf are usually a bit faster and have more advanced tech but tend to have more breakdowns, especially the newer ones.
When I worked at Honda R&D we had a Trumpf, so easy to program. We used to make 20-40 parts then reprogram and make 20 -30 of something else. Hardly any scrap, put the right numbers in it and the first part off the press is good.
 
I put Amada and Trumpf head to head. Amada was a bit less$ and tooling a bit less as well. But the Amada is a C frame design with not much more than 60 inches between the frames on an 8 foot machine. Read that as 60 inches of left right movement of the back gauge fingers. Also, the Amada was physically deeper and wider than the Trumpf 10 foot brake. Trumpf is an end frame machine so back gauge travel is about 10 foot. This allows me to stage different punch/die spacings along the beam for parts with bends on all 4 edges.
Trumpf has a new 10 foot model sim to what I bought for $115,000.00. 100 ton machine. There are differences in punch holders and also some other areas.
 
I put Amada and Trumpf head to head. Amada was a bit less$ and tooling a bit less as well. But the Amada is a C frame design with not much more than 60 inches between the frames on an 8 foot machine. Read that as 60 inches of left right movement of the back gauge fingers. Also, the Amada was physically deeper and wider than the Trumpf 10 foot brake. Trumpf is an end frame machine so back gauge travel is about 10 foot. This allows me to stage different punch/die spacings along the beam for parts with bends on all 4 edges.
Trumpf has a new 10 foot model sim to what I bought for $115,000.00. 100 ton machine. There are differences in punch holders and also some other areas.
I would say that trumpf are better when they are brand new and working properly....but you'll get more production out of an Amada in the long run.
Depends on your requirements I suppose, I have a customer that uses exclusively Trumpf, press brakes, lasers, punches but he replaces them every three years, those that don't do that are permanently paying the piper.
Typical German vs Japanese thing I suppose, a BMW 5 series is a nicer car than a Toyota camry but I know which I'd choose for long term ownership.
 
Accurpress is nice, or at least it was nice when I was using their machinery. Amada is expensive. Do not buy betenbender.

Used presses tend to be beat to hell. Accurpress has a nice little 60 ton 4 ft that is pretty sweet, but I saw one at an auction that was visibly bent in one of the connecting arms. 60 tons is that sweet spot where you think you can do anything because you can bend short pieces of 1/4", but it's also easy to overload the press.

For the work you do, you should likely look at Accurpress. Just remember that the tooling is expensive. If you need anything in particular, send me a message (I just sent you the brooch).
 
Accurpress is nice, or at least it was nice when I was using their machinery. Amada is expensive. Do not buy betenbender.

Used presses tend to be beat to hell. Accurpress has a nice little 60 ton 4 ft that is pretty sweet, but I saw one at an auction that was visibly bent in one of the connecting arms. 60 tons is that sweet spot where you think you can do anything because you can bend short pieces of 1/4", but it's also easy to overload the press.

For the work you do, you should likely look at Accurpress. Just remember that the tooling is expensive. If you need anything in particular, send me a message (I just sent you the brooch).
Thanks Jacob. I will look for one
 
Last we were looking to buy a brake, Cincinnati came out on top. Slightly more expensive, and using conventional hydraulics, but had better rapids and stroke and was compatible with Radbend, which we currently use with the Accurl we were looking to replace. Mitsubishi was a close second, then Amada. I was not all that pleased with Mitsuibishi's or Amada's offline programming software, which struggled with some of our more complex parts. Honestly I don't really like Radbend either, but it does work if you try hard enough. Delem had by far the worst offline programming software.

My main pet peeves are slow machines, software limited machines, and presses with very limited stroke.

In any case, stay away from Accurl. We got ours through Moore Machine Tool and it was a huge lemon and they have not supported us. That's probably ending in a lawsuit but that's outside my involvement.
 
Some US sheet metal guys I know turned me on to this chinese company. I have been watching their vids lately, and the machines are really cool. Yeah, I know, they are chinese. And you would probably have to order direct. But they do stuff that Dries and Krump never thought possible. Servo motor powered brakes and presses are the big thing these days with the top japanese companies, much more controllable than hydraulics. And the cnc back gaging these guys make is state of the art.

 
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Some US sheet metal guys I know turned me on to this chinese company.

I wasn't going to bring it up but since Reis did, we sold a couple million dollars of gear grinders to a place that makes presses and brakes for GM and Mercedes and those guys. May be too big for you, or they may also make smaller ones, I can ask if you would not hit me in the head with a stick for mentioning china.

btw, good to see you here again, can you put up a few pictures of whatever you've been doing ? Your stuff is too much fun.
 
Last we were looking to buy a brake, Cincinnati came out on top. Slightly more expensive, and using conventional hydraulics, but had better rapids and stroke and was compatible with Radbend, which we currently use with the Accurl we were looking to replace. Mitsubishi was a close second, then Amada. I was not all that pleased with Mitsuibishi's or Amada's offline programming software, which struggled with some of our more complex parts. Honestly I don't really like Radbend either, but it does work if you try hard enough. Delem had by far the worst offline programming software.

My main pet peeves are slow machines, software limited machines, and presses with very limited stroke.

In any case, stay away from Accurl. We got ours through Moore Machine Tool and it was a huge lemon and they have not supported us. That's probably ending in a lawsuit but that's outside my involvement.

What was the problem with the Accurl? (and the Chinese import brakes in general?) I had spoken to Jason at Moore Machine but I thought they wanted way to much. (~50K more than importing directly from another manufacture) From what I've seen they all seem to be the same, just different badging.
 
What was the problem with the Accurl? (and the Chinese import brakes in general?) I had spoken to Jason at Moore Machine but I thought they wanted way to much. (~50K more than importing directly from another manufacture) From what I've seen they all seem to be the same, just different badging
All of the electrical was loose, the backgauge is assembled from incorrect parts with hand drilled and manual machined spacer blocks that don't meet the specified travel, the ram hits the covers, the hydraulic valves were sticking, it shipped with a hydraulic leak, the lights on the ram don't work, the upper and lower tool holders were misaligned and loose, the hydraulic tank is improperly formed and filled in with bondo which doesn't hold up to hydraulic fluid, the backgauge cover was both overbent and too long and clearly cut after paint with a cutoff wheel, the backgauge bolts in the linear bearing blocks are stripped, the end stops were incorrect and resulted in crashes, the Z axis motor fell off (we have that on video), the proximity sensors weren't gapped correctly, the backgauge does not meet travel or accuracy or even travel speed, by a long margin, the software it comes with does not meet expectations, resonance on the lazersafe Iris mounts resulted in a mirror falling off internally, the Iris system isn't properly integrated and does not do the automatic bend correction it is supposed to, the brake doesn't hit the tonnage it's supposed to, it didn't ship with the panel cooler it was supposed to, a linear scale cable had a poorly wired connector which screwed with us for a long time, and a few other things I forget at the moment.
 
All of the electrical was loose, the backgauge is assembled from incorrect parts with hand drilled and manual machined spacer blocks that don't meet the specified travel, the ram hits the covers, the hydraulic valves were sticking, it shipped with a hydraulic leak, the lights on the ram don't work, the upper and lower tool holders were misaligned and loose, the hydraulic tank is improperly formed and filled in with bondo which doesn't hold up to hydraulic fluid, the backgauge cover was both overbent and too long and clearly cut after paint with a cutoff wheel, the backgauge bolts in the linear bearing blocks are stripped, the end stops were incorrect and resulted in crashes, the Z axis motor fell off (we have that on video), the proximity sensors weren't gapped correctly, the backgauge does not meet travel or accuracy or even travel speed, by a long margin, the software it comes with does not meet expectations, resonance on the lazersafe Iris mounts resulted in a mirror falling off internally, the Iris system isn't properly integrated and does not do the automatic bend correction it is supposed to, the brake doesn't hit the tonnage it's supposed to, it didn't ship with the panel cooler it was supposed to, a linear scale cable had a poorly wired connector which screwed with us for a long time, and a few other things I forget at the moment.
Other than that it was good, right?
 
Other than that it was good, right?
No, we had to figure out how to update the software so we could get all of the expected functions, it fails to detect USB drives, the controller is extremely slow, we had to upgrade the controller license to get the basic functionality that was expected, gauging surfaces are missing on the backgauge, lubrication zerks are missing or inaccessible, the American die slot and 60mm die slot are not aligned, so you can't switch between the two die styles, error codes are not descriptive, one side of the ram droops over time, random plugins fail to load until reboot, and I've had to contact the chinese manufacturer and Australian Lazersafe and Delem, and still never got the Delem offline programming software to work effectively.

But yeah, other than that it's been great. Bends parts a solid 30% of the time. And sometimes it even bends them in the right spot.
 
No, we had to figure out how to update the software so we could get all of the expected functions, it fails to detect USB drives, the controller is extremely slow, we had to upgrade the controller license to get the basic functionality that was expected, gauging surfaces are missing on the backgauge, lubrication zerks are missing or inaccessible, the American die slot and 60mm die slot are not aligned, so you can't switch between the two die styles, error codes are not descriptive, one side of the ram droops over time, random plugins fail to load until reboot, and I've had to contact the chinese manufacturer and Australian Lazersafe and Delem, and still never got the Delem offline programming software to work effectively.

But yeah, other than that it's been great. Bends parts a solid 30% of the time. And sometimes it even bends them in the right spot.
The bitter taste of poor quality remains long after the sweet taste of low price is gone.
 
The bitter taste of poor quality remains long after the sweet taste of low price is gone.

I dunno ... seems to work fine for SpaceX, most people here falling all over themselves oohing and aaahing that they exploded many millions of dollars because they were too stupid to figure out that an unprotected concrete launchpad was going to blow up. Even NASA had that covered, fifty years ago.
 
I dunno ... seems to work fine for SpaceX, most people here falling all over themselves oohing and aaahing that they exploded many millions of dollars because they were too stupid to figure out that an unprotected concrete launchpad was going to blow up. Even NASA had that covered, fifty years ago.
They knew the rocket was going to blow up, and knew the pad might not be sufficient. The launch was to get data. And they got a lot of data. It was mentioned that they really want a flat launch pad because this is supposed to take off on a return mission with minimal infrastructure.

Consider how much it costs to test everything independently and engineer out every little possible problem with certainty without a full system test. At a certain point it's cheaper just to build and try multiple times.
 








 
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