Apparatus and method of detecting bender operating time

摘要

In a bender (e.g., press brake), work (plate material) can be bent by a bending tool composed of a pair of punch and die. A position detector (17) mounted on a movable side of the bending tool generates a limit point pulse (ULi) whenever the tool reaches a limit point. A timer (29) measures a time interval between the two limit point pulses (ULi). A time compare discriminate section (31) compares the time interval measured by the time with a reference time interval (TR), and further discriminates the current bending as trial bending when the time interval is longer than the reference time but as an actual bending when shorter than the reference time. Further, an arithmetic section 33 calculates a sum total number of times of the bending and the sum total time period spent in the bendings, separately in both of the trial and actual bendings. The obtained bending data are displayed or recorded to obtain an accurate man-hour in the bending processing.