SShep71
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2014
- Location
- San Diego, Ca
I have an old Chicago-Dreis 12 ton mechanical press brake that has been beat down and repaired by some of the "finest in the chain of the species". I have tried to bring it back to life but there is just SO MUCH wrong with it that it does not seem feasible at this point. I have been kicking around the idea of converting it to hydraulic, but by the time I built cylinders, sourced a pump, built a tank and cooler, and furnished the valving it would be a hell of a project. Only to yield a hydraulic system (not that there is anything wrong with that). I started to look at other options and I came across servo press brake systems. I knew they existed, I just never considered one for this application. I am curious about the configuration of the servos that are used, most of the information I can find depicts a perpendicular drive system (servo motor at 90deg to the ball screw centerline), I was thinking about a linear drive system (ball screw inline with the motor) however I haven't found much to support the idea. I know the math to calculate the size of the servo needed should be pretty straight forward, I am just not there yet as I wanted to get feedback before I started to put the go gears in motion here. Does anyone have experience with the servo systems involved? I was hoping to get some feedback (pros/cons if you will) about the system, the size of the servos involved, and other general aspects of the design. The press brake I have is a 36" wide Chicago Dreis & Krump 131. I want to keep it a 36" brake and be able to bend 1/8" at 36". So my specs would be 80000psi tensile, 1.5" die opening, .125 radius, so somewhere around 7TPF of bend. There would obviously have to be some big improvements to the structure of the machine, but for now I am going to focus on the servo system.