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Is a guarded press brake more productive than an unguarded press brake?

 

 

If you asked this question to any press brake user they would tell you that this is impossible. Well Lazer Safe has achieved the impossible with a new guarding system that is set to revolutionise press brake productivity and safety.

 

Over the years the sheet metal industry has come to accept that with safety comes reduced productivity. The key factor that works against all close proximity guarding systems is the increased distance of slow speed closing above the material. To maintain safety the closing speed must be limited to 10mm per second whenever the optical guarding is muted. In most cases this means that the tools must close in slow speed anywhere from 10 to 25mm above the material. This significantly increases cycle times, reduces productivity and in the end costs money. 

 

For many years Lazer Safe has targeted this key issue and currently has the most productive guarding system on the market with slow speed closing reduced to only 6mm. This is far better than other systems currently available. However the sheet metal industry is still not satisfied, so Lazer Safe has developed a new guarding solution that now reduces the slow speed closing distance down to just 2mm. Compared to the previous system that offers 6mm or third party systems that can only offer 10 to 25mm it is obvious that the productivity advantage is enormous.  

 

The new LZS-005 system from Lazer Safe achieves levels of productivity that were never thought possible with close proximity guarding systems.  

 

If we take a look at an example of an average bend cycle of say 5 seconds on an unguarded press brake, the cycle would typically have about 6mm of slow speed closing before the pinch point and this would equate to 0.6 seconds of the 5 second cycle time (6mm at 10mm/s = 0.6s).

   

 

Now lets add a third party guarding system with a slow speed closing distance of 25mm. The cycle time increases by 2.3 seconds to a total cycle time of 7.3 seconds.

   

 

With the standard Lazer Safe system and 6mm slow speed closing distance the cycle time increases by 0.4 seconds to a total cycle time of 5.4 seconds. 

 

Finally with Lazer Safe LZS-005 and only 2mm slow speed closing distance the total cycle time remains at 5 seconds.   

If we compare these results over 1000 cycles;

- with an unguarded machine the job takes 90 minutes 

- with a third party system the job takes 121 minutes

- with a standard Lazer Safe system the job takes 90 minutes

- with Lazer Safe LZS-005 the job takes 83 minutes  

 

 

It is easy to see how a fully guarded machine can now achieve a higher level of productivity than an unguarded machine while remaining safety compliant.  

 

Lazer Safe LZS-005 is available from leading press brake manufacturers

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