An adaptive pressbrake control for strain-hardening materials

An improved adaptive pressbrake control algorithm is described. The problem is to control the punch reversal position of the press so that the final unloaded angle of the bend remains unchanged in the presence of material property and thickness variations of the sheets or plates being bent. Pressbrake control algorithms that use punch force-displacement data to identify thickness and material property variations have shown promise. However, since previous controllers have been based on an elastic-plastic material model, the parts have been overbent. In this paper, a controller based on an elastic, power-law strain-hardening model is proposed. Experiments have shown that the model eliminates the tendency to overbend the parts that is present in the elastic-plastic algorithm.