Metal Punching Services

Sheet metal punching offers quite a few important benefits for metal fabrication, some of these are:

1. Versatility: Sheet metal punching can be used to create a wide range of shapes and sizes, from simple round holes to complex cutouts and embossing enabled by custom tooling.

2. Tight tolerances: CNC punch presses offer precise control over the punching process, resulting in high accuracy and repeatability.

3. High speed: Metal punching process is fast and can produce many almost-identical parts quickly and efficiently.

4. Cost-effective: For high-volume production runs, punching can be the cheapest option. The higher the volume, the lower the cost per part as it drives down the impact of setup costs (and custom tooling, if needed) on the total price.

5. Minimal material waste: Sheet metal punching is a highly efficient process that produces minimal material waste compared to other cutting methods. The punched sheet metal can also be recycled, reducing environmental impact.

6. Customisation: Punches and dies can be custom-made to produce complex shapes and features, allowing for the customisation of parts to meet specific design requirements.

7. Consistency: Punching offers high consistency and uniformity across a production run, resulting in parts that fit together precisely and work as intended.

8. No HAZ: Unlike thermal cutting methods like laser or plasma cutting, punching does not heat the metal. Thus, it is free of heat-affected zones.

Metal punching is a common metal fabrication process that uses material removal to get a metal part with the desired shape and features. The punch press moves the punch downward towards the die at high speed and forces it to produce holes, cutouts, embosses, etc.

For clarity’s sake, metal punching and blanking are two different operations with a simple differentiator. In punching, the metal that gets punched out is scrap. In blanking, the final part gets punched out.

Sheet metal punching operations can also be used for forming. Features like embossed patterns, raised letters and other decorative or functional elements are all possible.

Standard shapes like different rectangles, circles and ovals are readily available for any punch press. If more complex shapes are required, there might be a need for custom tooling. The cost-efficiency of customisation usually depends on the total volumes and used materials.

The punch has a counterpart in the form of a die. The important part there is the clearance between the dies and punches to ensure optimum quality.

Historically, the manual punch press was of course the first one to launch and is still widely used. But their importance has diminished due to their labour-intensive nature and lesser accuracy.

CNC punch presses are more common today. These machines are powered by hydraulic, pneumatic or electrical means. The turrets can often handle 20 to 40 tools at once, making them very flexible and fast.

CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control. Meaning that those machines are operated by computers running on code generated based on inputs from the machine operator. Therefore, the whole setup from tooling to code generation takes time, which is something to take into account cost-wise.

A CNC punching machine is a type of sheet metal punch that is controlled by a computer to produce precise and efficient cuts. CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control, which means that the machine runs on computer code to perform the tasks at hand. This results in high precision and speed when producing holes or other shapes in sheet metal.

CNC punching machines can be used for a variety of metal sheets, including aluminium, stainless steel and steel, and can produce both components and finished products with accuracy and consistency.