CAN I BEND?
Nice question from the customer. It is the reality when you start to choose the press brake machine your main consulting partner is the manufacturer. There are a lot of choices - to buy just the machine, to request the study of all your drawings, to make the contract with the purchasing acceptance only after the fabrication of the part you need and much more. And it is serious - let's say if you are buying 100 tons press brake from Turkey and mainly know the possibilities it is one thing but completely other if you are buying nearly one million tandem press brake specially for your part. Everybody understand very clear that without this part you do not need the machine so all the mistakes and problems with the acceptance are at the shoulders of the manufacturer. You also should know the secret - normally for big projects and machines manufacturers make all studies and also the tooling in house. For small machines and projects normally everybody go to the press brake tooling manufacturer for case study. Specially the dealers because their knowledge could be very limited.
Ok, the stage number two. You have got the machine. The responsibility of the manufacturer of press brake is over after the second day of the installation and normally with bending process they will try to help if you will request the second machine or for additional price. Now it means that all the projects for bending of your parts are at your hands and your technicians. That is why the most general request from the technician - "here is my part, how to bend it?".
Ok, we ready to help if there are 2-3 drawings. If there are 30, the best way is to hire the bending engineer to do his job and not trying to find the consulting for free. Moreover sometimes customers are cheating - they are getting the press brake tools list and all the study and than try to find the cheapest supplier. Normally to the supplier who spent zero time for the project and didn't invest nothing to the study. So to prevent this we also prefer the limited help.
When the customer is coming with the drawings request the main thing also to answer how to make all the parts with the minimum set of tooling and readjustments. Probably for more expensive types but with the maximum comfort. This is the important point because when the customer is asking how to bend you can answer - this part with this tool, this part with this tool etc. But be realistic, customer will never purchase several sets of tools for all parts if there is no other way to solve.
Mainly our recommendations to study all the parts during the purchase of new machine. Modern press brake has a lot of options and accessories and special configuration and it will be hard or impossible to install them after. We can study your project even for new machine and do not thing that tooling from the manufacturer will be more cheaper. They will be more expensive anyway so if you will receive them very cheap please note that it was your real discount for the machine. But if you will ignore the situation for full detailed study with the machine purchase probably you will loose some important point, for example the additional opening which you need for special parts.
So to finalize. We will be glad to make consulting from the beginning or after if your machine is already installed. Maybe you can even double your position to contact with the press brake manufacturer and us with the same time to make the good based choice.