Master of all angles

The tools that are often used on press brakes tend to push con­ven­tional safety devices to their limits for var­ious rea­sons. Espe­cially on com­pact machinery: space is in short supply. Not with PSENvip 2 – the size of the receiver module is reduced by about half.

Special use for protection

In line with the stan­dard EN 12622, each bending line must be pro­tected by a pro­tected field that is posi­tioned in the fac­tory at least 15 mm in front. The chal­lenge and require­ment in com­plying with the nor­ma­tive spec­i­fi­ca­tion is that the tool is com­pletely within the pro­tec­tion sys­tem’s field of vision. PSENvip and the second, extended gen­er­a­tion PSENvip 2 meet these stan­dard spec­i­fi­ca­tions. In com­bi­na­tion with the automa­tion system PSS 4000, the inte­grated “Fast Analysis Unit” guar­an­tees shut­down times of under one mil­lisecond and the shortest stop­ping dis­tances for the press brake tool. The press brake is thus safe, even at very high speeds. “The simple han­dling, the high reli­a­bility and the resulting achiev­able increase in pro­duc­tivity and machine avail­ability are the major rea­sons why we have relied on the PSENvip pro­tec­tion system for the Xpert series for years,” empha­sises Karsten Trautvetter, respon­sible for product man­age­ment at Bystronic.

Observer with precision values

Close cus­tomer con­tact and knowl­edge about cur­rent needs and require­ments on the user side are con­stant dri­vers of inno­va­tion at Bystronic. “The newly devel­oped module for bending angle mea­sure­ment from Pilz that is unique in this form and can be easily inte­grated in the camera-based pro­tec­tion system PSENvip 2 came at exactly the right time,” states Karsten Trautvetter. ­PSENvip is par­tic­u­larly advan­ta­geous for small press brakes with short bending lengths and no room for any mea­suring equip­ment to be installed. The camera system is installed at the side on the upper die and deter­mines the mea­sure­ment data; the bending angle module eval­u­ates all deter­mined mea­sure­ment data on the bending con­tour of the sheet and pro­vides it to the machine visu­al­i­sa­tion via a stan­dard inter­face.

The image data trans­mitted to the con­trol system directly shows the oper­ating per­sonnel the cur­rent angle mea­sure­ment on the oper­ating dis­play during press braking. This enables a fast and effi­cient check of the achieved bending angle. Labo­rious manual mea­sure­ments or expen­sive angle mea­sure­ment sys­tems that take up space are not needed. The tech­no­log­ical basis for meeting the high nor­ma­tive spec­i­fi­ca­tions are pow­erful optics with LED light as well as the robust design of the pro­tec­tion system which is insen­si­tive to reflec­tions as well as external and stray light. “As was already the case with the pre­de­cessor, with PSENvip 2 instal­la­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion and com­mis­sioning can also be easily per­formed directly via a web inter­face,” adds Karsten Trautvetter.

“Low speed” phase as highlight

An effec­tive con­tri­bu­tion to increasing pro­duc­tivity is also made by dynamic muting: With a con­ven­tional muting pro­ce­dure, the upper tool con­sis­tently moves the last mil­lime­tres at the per­mis­sible safe speed of 10 mm per second. With dynamic muting of the pro­tec­tion system PSENvip 2 in com­bi­na­tion with the “Fast Analysis Unit”, the upper tool dynam­i­cally reduces its speed to a min­imum from the ini­tial 300 mm per second across a “slow route”. The press brake tool does not travel at “low speed” until the last mil­limetre before making con­tact with the work­piece. “Low speed” is thus the guar­antee for “fast” press brakes: “By using camera-based pro­tec­tion system PSENvip 2 and automa­tion system PSS 4000, we have ver­i­fi­ably increased the pro­duc­tivity of our press brakes by around 20 per­cent,” claims Karsten Trautvetter. “Com­pared to models with com­pa­rable pressing force, our press brakes are more respon­sive and more effi­cient!”