Aluminum Press Brake Tooling Dies Punches ???? Advantages, applications?

[douglasco]

I'm guessing non-marring, good for plastics and SS. Or anytime you don't want carbon steel impregnated. Any other marvelous uses?

[douglasco]

Went to a shop today, they had lots. With the price of steel the way it is and it getting harder and harder to find good deals. I'm contemplating making quite a collection. Since i'm not doing production work i can't justify the cost of the real stuff just because of wear. Is there anything to avoid making from scratch(welding) Today I saw just about every type of punch / die made from scratch. I'd never seen anybody make a die out of angleiron before.

[Med-Pac]

I've been running press brakes for years. My best advice would be to use common sense.....it'll get you a long way. Homemade punch and dies will work for just about everything, except the long stuff. Welding things together perfectly square tends to get alot tougher after about 3-4 foot long.

What kind of tooling are you looking for? If you have a plasma cutter the options are limitless. You can cut several profiles out of .5 plate and weld them together. Very quick way of building dies.....does get a little on the heavy side though.

Mike

[Med-Pac]

Another thing I forgot to mention. Keep in mind that there is only a certain amount of tonnage that you should subject a homemade die to. It's better to overkill on the construction/material/welding to be on the safe side.

Mike

[tikka308]

Hey folks - would appreciate some quick advice. I just realized that my 24" box & pan brake doesn't have sufficient clearance for a few bends I'll need to do (16 gauge sheetmetal) so I'd like to purchase an H-frame hydraulic press with V-dies. I see lots of vendors with the presses, but where the heck do I find dies? I'm just a hobbyist, so I don't imagine some of the companies I found via google (e.g. http://www.midwestpressbrake.com/) would deal with me. I was hoping to see these products in MSC, Enco, etc, but cannot find them. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!