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Many sheet metal part designers choose to use pre-finished sheet metal in an effort to eliminate post operations such as painting and polishing. One critical challenge to building parts with pre-finished material is bending the parts without causing die marks. The slightest marking from the die could cause a pre-finished part to be rejected.

Over the years, press brake tooling manufacturers have developed a few solutions for preventing die marks. One popular solution consists of laying a thin sheet of cloth or polyurethane on top of the die. This protects the outside of the metal as the part is bent. The challenge with this method is when the protective sheet begins to wear out, this results in poor angular repeatability. The poor angular repeatability requires the operator to closely monitor the angles during production. Subsequently, the press brake program needs to be adjusted often to correct the angles as the protective sheet continues to break down. Eventually the protective material needs to be replaced and the angle adjusted again to compensate for the new protective sheet.

In an automated process, such as robotic bending, these protective sheets are also not a good solutions due to the poor angular control from the beginning of a job through completion.

Mate’s nylon inserts are a great choice for a robotic bending cell as well as manual bending because nylon die inserts retain their shape. The shape retention allows you to produce cost effective mark free bends with consistent angles for years.

Nylon dies are manufactured with standard V opening sizes from .236″(6mm) to .984″ (25mm) and angles of 30˚, 45˚, 60˚, and 88˚.  Nylon dies should be selected specifically for the sheet thickness of the application just as with standard steel dies.

Mate nylon die insert holders are available for European Precision Style and Trumpf Wila Style.

Mate Press Brake tools have a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee.