Press Brakes

It depends on material, thickness, bend length and the V-die opening — as a rule of thumb the V-opening runs about 8× material thickness, and air bending needs far less force than coining. Stainless needs roughly 40–60% more tonnage than mild steel; aluminium less. Tell us the thickest, longest part you bend and we'll work the number properly, with margin.

Nothing — they're the same machine. "Press brake" is the industry-standard term; "brake press" is the common workshop word order in Australia. Folders and pan brakes are a different machine again, for thin sheet and long, shallow flanges.

Electric (servo) brakes are faster, more precise and cheaper to run, and suit most work up to around 300 tonnes. Hydraulics cost less per tonne and go far larger. For a typical job shop bending mixed work, the control and tooling usually matter more than the drive type.

As a rough guide the market runs from tens of thousands for entry imported machines to well past $250,000 for high-tonnage European brakes — and the landed price is only part of it: freight, installation, commissioning, tooling and training all count. A1 quotes the whole picture, not just the box.

Usually ram-to-bed parallelism, worn tooling, missing crowning compensation, or thickness variation in the material — a 0.1 mm penetration error is roughly a quarter of a degree. It's fixable: calibration and crowning setup is standard service work for A1.