Introduction
This post is about letter bending and welding machines supply and install in Sydney.
XQL-SB180 Channel letter bending machine details described here
XQL-JG300G letter welding machine and XQL-SB180 channel letter bending machine, are ideal combination for solid stainless steel 3D signage.
You can find more about letter welding machine here
letter bending and welding machine installation
Channel letter bending machine
Channel letter bending machine is very similar to a CNC in terms of control system, This machine has some servo motors and stepper motors, according to the machine options selected.
Mechanical parts and computer hardware installation steps described in the following video:
Letter bending machine instruction manual
This machine comes with complete instruction manual in PDF format. This manual describes all the different aspects of this kind of machine. This instruction manual can be downloaded here
Feeding and Bending balance calibration
There are few adjustments for any letter bending machine. Feeding calibration is general adjustment to be done, but bending balance and bending force to be done for each material thickness and width. Because every different material, thickness and width, got different deflection and retraction characteristics. For each material we test and save parameters.
Letter bending machine operation
This process starts with “device initialisation”. For feeding home, do not forget to put material, because machine would home the strip position. Bending home and slotting home can be done any time before processing. But remind that machine would home automatically before processing, itself.
The most important item for communicating with letter bending machine is DXF file structure. Machine software needs only straight line drawing. In Adobe illustrator using anchor points and simplifying would result to just line outputs. In Corel draw it’s possible select “poly curves” option when exporting DXF.
After importing proper DXF file, the required part of that should be selected for processing.
Letter bending machine in action
After installation machine started to process stainless steel letters.
Sample processing of a letter can be viewed in the following video,
Letter welding machine
Letter welding machine specially designed for easy returns welding to the base letter. It is very efficient to use letter bending and welding machines together. The base usually cut with fiber laser cutting CNC machine and walls and returns made with channel letter bending machine as described aove.
This machine installation steps can be viewed in the following video,
Machine comes with instruction manual which is available here
This machine takes advantage of YAG laser and camera for convenient welding of stainless steel letters and touch screen HMI for parameters setting.
In the following video demonstrated how convenient is to use letter bending and welding machines in a signage shop.
Letter welding machine has three main parameters for adjusting. They are current, pulse width and frequency.
Recommended parameters showed in the following photo.
Current generally means strength of the laser beam, while pulse width refers to welding spot diameter. Frequency generally means how many times in a period to shoot the laser beam.
Camera assisted welding is for small to medium size letters. For giant letters or hard to reach points also handheld gun can be used in this machine.
Generally speaking letter bending and welding machines can be used for stainless steel and galvanised lettering in signage, but of course stainless steel welding gives much better finish quality, as coating has to be removed for galvanised pieces prior to welding and it has to be repainted in the welded area.