What material is the pipe? M.S.? What wall section thickness, how accurate do the slots need to be, how far apart are they, only in one side, on the centre line, what presses or feeders do you have, more importantly what is your projected volume P.A. ??? We have designed tooling to punch slot like these for shelf brackets in racking systems, bigger slots in longer sections but virtually the same thing.
Exactly, the same is required for shelving system. The material of the pipe is stainless steel 204 grade. The thickness is 1.5 mm. I want two adjacent slots with distance between those 20 mm. And vertically the distance needs to be 25 mm. The volumes are not a constrain yet as the product demand will describe it. We have presses ranging from 5 Ton to 150 Ton.
We do a lot of tube punching here, as it is part of our main business. But the one thing we have started doing, that we find cost effective, is laser cutting tube in situations such as yours. Of course EAU plays a big part in whether this is cost effective or not.
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There are always others less fortunate than you, be happy, to them you are Mr. Jones.
The tooling we made actually punched a slot in both sides of the RHS simultaneously with cam operated slides { I think they were a commercial Sankyo cam unit } the tubing was fed over the die section by a simple air gripper slide system operating between 2 dead stops with small nitro springs to cushion the end stops, there were 2 air operated tube locks that held the tubing solidly during the punching stroke & released during the feed stroke to allow the gripper slide to feed the next pitch, there were proximity switches to signal movements etc.
The guide section for the tubing also acted as a bridge type stripper, the tubing ran in on a guide rail about 1.5 m long , the die section was a neat sliding fit on the inside of the RHS section & was attached to a length of hollow tube mounted on an outrigger attached to the actual tooling to maintain accuracy & to a pedestal on the floor to support the weight {mass} & was adjustable lengthwise to align the punches to the die openings, side ways the tooling design & accuracy aligned the punches to the die openings, there was a timed air blast to blow the slugs out of the clearance slot under the die opening in the solid die section, any loose slugs in the tube were just shaken out when the tube was removed.
The MS RHS we were using was fairly consistent in it's internal sizes, so the die section remained in fairly good alignment to the punches once set up.
We did experience one problem, the tubing as recieved was dead straight, after the punching, despite the fact both punches on opposite sides were timed to contact at exactly the same time & were absolutely identical in size & both had rooftop shear, the tubing always had a slight curvature, it was a problem that was never really resolved despite much head scratching & trials, it was however within acceptable tolerance for straightness.
We had another tool that only punched one slot in one side & the RHS always remained dead straight after punching. ???? Sorta shoots some theories down Eh !
MAKE absolutely sure the slugs are free to blow out of the die section 100% and don't jam or stack up, air grind & polish the opening & trial it before production !!!
Die Design Questions
Re: Die Design Questions
