You Just Spent Twenty Minutes Looking for a 16mm Vee Die That Was on the Wrong Shelf
Press brake operators know the feeling. The job card says 2mm mild steel, 90-degree bend, inside radius 3mm. You need the die with the 16mm vee, and it's not where it should be. Somebody used it on the night shift, put it back in the wrong slot, and now you're walking the length of the tool rack pulling dies out by hand, checking the engraving with a torch, and losing setup time that the production schedule doesn't have.
Ten fields. That's all this template has. It's enough.
Vee Size, Angle, Radius: The Three Numbers That Define the Bend
Die No. identifies the physical tool. Vee Size is the opening width of the die groove — the single most important parameter for bend quality. Too narrow and you crack the material on the outside radius. Too wide and your bend angle drifts because the material isn't fully seated. Angle records the included angle of the vee — 88°, 90°, 30°, whatever the die was ground to. Radius captures the bottom-of-vee radius that determines the minimum inside bend radius achievable.
These three fields together answer the question every brake operator asks: "Which die do I need for this material thickness, this bend angle, and this inside radius?" Filter by vee size first, then angle, then radius. The result is a shortlist of one or two dies. Check the photo to confirm which rack position it lives in.
Tonnage and Length: The Numbers That Protect the Machine
Tonnage is the maximum force rating for the die. Exceed it and you crack the tool, or worse, you damage the press brake ram. A die rated for 30 tonnes per metre doesn't care that you "only bent one part" — if you ran it at 45 tonnes, the stress concentration at the vee root just shortened its life by a thousand cycles. The Die Length field determines which brake it fits and how you stage it for offset bends.
Sec 1 and Sec R are section measurements — cross-sectional dimensions that matter when you're nesting dies in a multi-vee holder or checking that a die profile clears the adjacent tooling in a staged setup. When the gap between your punch and the next station is 40mm and your die section is 38mm, you know it fits. At 42mm, you're re-sequencing the bend order or switching to a narrower-section die.
Height: The Dimension Nobody Checks Until the Ram Bottoms Out
Die height determines shut height — the minimum distance between the ram and the bed when the brake is fully closed. Mix dies of different heights in the same setup and you get uneven pressure distribution, inconsistent bend angles, and potential tool damage. Filtering your die database by height before selecting tooling for a multi-bend setup prevents the kind of mistake that puts a crack in a hardened die worth more than the part you were trying to make.
The Image field closes the loop. A photo of each die — profile view showing the vee geometry, engraved die number visible — means the operator can visually confirm they've pulled the right tool before they clamp it into the press. When your die rack holds sixty tools and half of them look identical from the end, that photo is the difference between a correct setup and a scrapped first-off.