Punches, Mastercut platform, developed originally for gasket production

The trepanning punch tool head is used in applications where small round holes cannot be cut easily with a fixed blade tool head. If small circles are cut individually with the blade, then cutting speeds are often reduced to the point where the cutting cycle becomes too slow and production runs too long. An example of a production application that requires a punch head, is filter cutting where the multiple bolt holes for the filter flanges have to be cut.

The Mastercut and Genesis 2100 industrial flatbed cutting machine platforms are extremely adaptable and can be configured to carry a wide variety of cutting tools. The picture on the left shows a trepanning multi-punch tool head that can cut holes in a wide variety of materials such as plastic, rubber, laminates, thin sheet metal, cardboard and other fibrous sheet materials. The punch is CNC controlled and electromagnetically operated for high precision. The unit is heavily built so that it operates reliably at high production speeds. It is ideally suited for cutting large arrays of precisely placed holes. The unit shown in the accompanying photographs was developed for a specialized gasket cutting application that required the cutting of a series of precisely placed and perfectly round mounting holes on the margins of the gasket component. This is a multi tool head with a plotting pen (the black unit on the left), a three-axis fixed blade cutting head (just to the right of the pen), and two punches of different diameters. This one unit is able to label or mark the gaskets (pen) cut the shapes of the gasket (blade), and punch the mounting holes (punches).

The punch tool shown in the photographs is fitted on a medium duty multi-tool tangential head, that can be optionally fitted with a fixed blade (drag knife) and a rotary blade (pizza wheel). This configuration of three tools pre-installed on one cutting head assembly means that a wide variety of materials can be cut using the same Mastercut or Genesis machine, with no need for down-time to install or realign the cutting heads to operate on a new material. For this reason, a single flatbed cutting machine can handle multiple cutting projects with little or no delay between set-ups. This tool head is shown mounted on a Genesis platform, but the unit is also ideal for the heavy-duty Mastercut 2100 flatbed cutting platform. The photograph shows the punch tool on the left, and the mounting points for the fixed blade and pizza wheel blades on the right.

Another view of the punch head is shown to the left. The unit is robust and well-engineered, designed for the rigors of long-term industrial production. The trepanning punch tool head can accommodate a wide range of standard punch tools. The unit has been tested on holes up to ¾ inch, but is capable of cutting larger holes. If your cutting application is heavy duty, requiring a much larger or custom punch tool with a non-regular shape, then we suggest that you upgrade the machine specifications to the much more robust Mastercut platform that is expressly designed for high torque and high impact applications such as this. If all your questions about Blackman and White and the Mastercut and Gensis range of cutting machines and specialized tool heads are not answered in our web page, then please Contact Us.