Sheet Metal Forming | All Metals Fabrication

Safan Press BrakePress brake forming at All Metals Fabrication (AMF) continues to be a valuable service for our customers. We have made another significant investment into this forming service by acquiring the latest in technology with our new, one hundred percent electric, Safan press brake.Safan press brakes are renowned throughout the world for speed, accuracy, easy setups and near perfect repeatability.In recent years, the insane speeds of new Fiber Laser cutting have created bottlenecks at the forming stations because press brakes cannot keep up with the laser cutting. Hence, more capacity and increased press brake forming speeds are vital to keep parts rolling off the shop floor and into our customers’ hands.By adding our new Safan Press Brake, AMF will have the ability to rip parts off the laser and move them to forming at an extremely rapid pace.This quick turnaround creates enormous benefits for our customers—much faster turnaround times, much shorter lead times and, of course, more competitive pricing.Safan press brakes make this possible by utilizing technology that traditional hydraulic press brakes simply cannot match.For one, hydraulic brakes are susceptible to changing conditions like oil temperature which can vary based on the time of day or duration of machine use. Such changes, though manageable, often create stalls or delays in the forming process. Hydraulic brakes must then be adjusted to maintain repeatability and be constantly checked, which means both of these “managed” processes minimize operational efficiency.In addition, since hydraulic press brakes use big rams at opposite ends of the brake, constant care must be used to managed the “middle” of the brake where no force is being directly applied. Modern hydraulic machines utilize sophisticated crowning technology which can be very helpful, but Safan electric brakes avoid this crowning issue altogether by utilizing a system that pushes the ram downward at even force and pace along the entire x-axis of the brake—making crowning forces, particularly in smaller-sized machines, pretty much a non-factor.Again, the benefits to our customers are rapidly-produced parts because of consistency—no stops and starts, no pauses and adjustments, nothing but one setup and then rapid forming production, which translates, of course, into faster turnaround times, shorter lead times and more competitive pricing.Another feature electric brakes often have over hydraulic brakes is simply the speed of the forming. Press brake forming, boiled down to its simplest form, is simply pushing a pedal and engaging a bending die to cycle downward and upward. That up and down motion—up down, up down, over and over again—drives how fast the parts get formed.Electric press brakes, for many technical reasons, also simply move faster than most hydraulic brakes. Comparing the hydraulic brake to the Safan electric press brake is like comparing an old, steady pickup truck to a modern, electric roadster. The truck, while well-recognized, durable and enduring, is not known for speed and agility.On the other hand, the Safan electric brake, is very fast and modern, very sleek and designed for optimal efficiency.So, while hydraulic brakes may be the winners in old-school, big plate forming, they do not fare so well with modern parts often used in OEM assemblies, where smaller-sized parts and pieces are required. Conversely, our Safan “roadster,” dashes in and out of smaller-sized parts and pieces like a Tesla ripping through a frontage road to avoid freeway traffic.Again, the key benefits to our customers are faster turn times, shorter lead times and more competitive pricing.Although run-time speeds are vital, another significant feature of AMF’s new Safan press brake is the ease of setup. AMF purchased Safan’s top-of-the-line press brake to enhance setup speeds. The Safan Ultra press brake series comes with two 11 by 17 monitors and advanced programming to allow all our press brake operations to be modeled offline and readied for implementation the moment the parts hit the machine.Offline programming allows the programmer to select dies, forming sequences, back-stop locations and other vital forming information all while the machine is busy working on other parts. Press brake operators at the actual machine can go from one part to another with minimal setup time because nearly all of the setup requirements can be accomplished offline.Once a new part is ready to start at the machine, the machine operator simply grabs the new part’s program and implements the setup details which are already programmed. They can be directed on the exact dies to select for forming and where to put them. In addition, details like forming progressions—the order in which each bend is made—are all solved and ready before the part hits the machine. Setup is, essentially, reduced to locating dies and making micro adjustments to forming depths.This kind of offline programming takes traditional setup times (which can often be very lengthy on press brakes operations) and reduces them, in many cases by over one hundred percent. Twenty minutes of setup, for example, will likely be reduced to seven minutes.One more time—these are huge benefits to our customer—faster turn times, shorter lead times and very competitive pricing.Perhaps one last detail, as mentioned earlier, is the large monitors associated with the press brake that allow the operator constant access to how the part should look as they run their respective parts through the machine.The constant feedback and ability to see the part in real-time—how it should be oriented, where it should be hitting the backstops, which sequence of bend is next, etc.—all of these little details create a mode of confidence and consistency that helps the operator form high quality parts the first time, and every time, the parts sequence through their progression of bends.High-quality parts, made right the first time, are very important. Scraped parts—even the ones caught in QA before reaching the customer—cost money and time. Those scrape percentages are normally calculated, generally, into G&A (general and administrative) overhead expenses. Minimizing those percentages helps AMF pass on savings to our customers.Last time said—all of this translates into faster production, shorter lead times and more competitive pricing.AMF is charging forward in the press brake forming services.Please, contact us at info@allmetalsfab.com for more information and ask us how our new press brake capacity can help you feel more optimistic about getting formed parts quickly, well-priced and right when they land on your receiving dock.

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