Three bending modes

Everybody in the sheet metal working industry knows press brake, knows bending, tooling and so on, but not everybody knows there are three bending modes of bending a part at a certain angle, here the writer introduces the three bending modes,

1. Air bending, this is the most common bending mode, please see the following picture,

Using this mode, when bending, the two sides of the bending part touch with the die only on two points, not fit the internal two sides of the die fully. This bending mode is flexible, you can bend the part at many different angles with one set of die. Using this mode, the test bend has to be needed, this means the first one or first two parts will be test parts and wasted.

2. Bottoming bending, please see the following picture,

Using this mode, when bending, the two sides of the bending part will fit the internal two sides of die fully, the angle accuracy will be higher than the air bending, and the bending R will be smaller. But the bottoming bending needs much higher bending force, and it is easy to cause the scratch of the part. Using this mode, you can only bend the part at one certain angle with one set of die. Bottoming bending is mainly used for thin material with less variations in material properties and thickness.

3. Adaptive bending, you can think this mode is the upgraded version of the air bending. Please see the following picture,

If the machine is equipped with angle measuring system such as Trumpf’s ACB, Bystronic’s LAMS, LVD’s Easy-Form, when bending, the measuring system will measure the part, this is called adaptive bending. Using this mode, the first bending part will be the qualified bending part, test bend is not needed, and the bending accuracy will be same as air bending when the adaptive bending is at the database mode; the bending accuracy is higher than air bending when the adaptive bending is at the spring-back measurement mode. Using adaptive bending mode, the processing efficiency is lower than the air bending especially when being at spring-back measurement mode. Adaptive bending also requires the operator to be at higher level.

The above is for the common bending which is to bend a part at a certain angle, besides above bending modes, there are also the hemming and coining for special bending applications, we will not introduce the hemming and coining here. If you have any question about bending, welcome to contact us.

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