I just posted over in the EDM forum about the die-making side of this task, and now I need to deal with the punch press. We use a single-action punch press to produce little parts for our internal use, but there's a new part we need to make in relatively larger quantity (several thousand per week) and it essentially involves shearing out a 1/4"-diameter piece of annealed 26-ga stock and drawing it about 0.15" deep. We want to do both steps in one operation.
I know we could make a die set to do this on a single-action press, but in my handbooks on die-making, you see these big double-acting presses that are made for these tasks, and the die sets are a lot simpler. When I look around, I'm having a hard time finding a small used double-acting punch press. This seems like a common task, so I suspect I'm just not searching the right terms. Anybody know of a machine that fits the bill? Or better yet, anybody have a small (let's say, <30 ton) double-acting punch press they want to sell?
I know we could make a die set to do this on a single-action press, but in my handbooks on die-making, you see these big double-acting presses that are made for these tasks, and the die sets are a lot simpler. When I look around, I'm having a hard time finding a small used double-acting punch press. This seems like a common task, so I suspect I'm just not searching the right terms. Anybody know of a machine that fits the bill? Or better yet, anybody have a small (let's say, <30 ton) double-acting punch press they want to sell?
