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Perforated doors, vented side panels and fan-cut top plates — thousands of holes per panel, at rack-grade pitch accuracy, without a scratch on the powder-coat.
A 19-inch rack is not a bending problem. It is a punching problem with bending attached. A single perforated front door can carry several thousand holes at high open area; side panels, top plates and cable managers add thousands more. That volume of holes, in 1.0 to 2.0 mm cold-rolled or galvanised sheet, is what decides the equipment — and it is why the primary machine here is a CNC turret punch press, not a panel bender.
A servo turret punch completes perforation, louvring, fan cut-outs, cable entries, embossed ribs and thread preparations in one clamping, using nibbling and multi-tool stations rather than tracing every hole. A CNC panel bender then folds the door and panel returns. A press brake covers brackets and shelves. What no sheet-metal machine produces is the 19-inch mounting upright — that is a roll-formed profile, a different process, and one STON CNC does not supply.
STON CNC (Qingdao Ston Mechanical Technology Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese original manufacturer of CNC panel benders and turret punch presses, founded in 2006 in Qingdao, China. All equipment described here is built inside STON CNC's own 20,000㎡ factory, from casting and heat treatment through machining, assembly and inspection. Machines carry ISO 9001 quality certification and CE marking under Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, and are exported to more than 80 countries. View certifications and patents →
Rack production concentrates almost all of its machining time in a handful of heavily perforated panels. Get those off a laser and onto a turret punch and the whole shop rebalances.
Fiber laser is unbeatable on contours and one-off shapes. On a repeated hole array it pierces every hole individually, and the cycle time scales linearly with hole count. A turret punch nibbles and multi-hits with a single tool, so a heavily perforated door stops being the constraint on the whole line.
Removing 40 to 60 percent of the material out of a 1.5 mm door releases stress, and a warped door will not close on a rack. Punch sequencing, an over-tonnage protected striking system and a brush-and-ball composite table that supports the panel while it moves are what keep the blank flat enough to bend.
19-inch mounting geometry is defined by IEC 60297-3-100 and EIA-310 — a fixed 44.45 mm U pitch with a repeating hole group. Cumulative pitch error across 42U is what makes third-party equipment fail to fit. Positioning repeatability of roughly ±0.01 to 0.02 mm on a double rack-and-pinion drive is what holds it over a long panel.
For rack work, size the turret punch first and the bender second. The punch is where the hours go; the bender is rarely the constraint.
Rack sheet metal sits comfortably inside the forming window. The limit that matters on this page is not thickness — it is that mounting uprights are a roll-formed product and no punch or bender will make them.
| Parameter | Turret punch press | Panel bender | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical rack gauge | 1.0–2.0 mm | 1.0–2.0 mm | Well inside capacity |
| Cold-rolled steel max | Set by tonnage and tool | ≤2.0 mm cast / ≤1.5 mm welded | At full bending length |
| Stainless steel max | Set by tonnage and tool | ≤1.2 mm cast / ≤1.0 mm welded | For outdoor telecom enclosures |
| Max sheet in one position | X-axis 2500 mm | — | Secondary positioning to 5000 mm |
| Sheet width | Y-axis 1250 / 1500 mm | up to 1500 mm | — |
| Max sheet load | 150 kg | — | — |
| Punching accuracy | ±0.1 mm | — | Repeatability approx. ±0.01–0.02 mm |
| Turret speed | 40 rpm servo / 30 rpm mechanical | — | — |
| Max forming size | — | up to 2800 × 1500 mm | By model |
| Utilities | 380 V ±5%, 0.55 MPa air | Three-phase 380 V, 0.6 MPa air | Configured to destination voltage |
Heavily perforated doors and vented panels in 1.0–2.0 mm, plus four-sided folded doors, side panels and plinths. Rack production is one of the strongest cases for pairing a turret punch with a panel bender.
19-inch mounting uprights, frame profiles and C-sections. These are roll-formed products from a different process and a different supplier — a turret punch can pierce a flat strip, but it cannot form the profile.
Shelves, cable arms, mounting brackets, castor plates and low-volume specials. One press brake alongside a punch-and-bend cell covers everything that should not tie up the main machines.
Risk assessment follows EN ISO 12100; safety-related control functions such as light-curtain interruption and emergency stop are specified to EN ISO 13849-1. Hydraulic press brakes supplied into the EU are built against EN 12622. Machines placed on the EU market carry CE marking under Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC with the accompanying technical file. Quality management is certified to ISO 9001, and machined structural tolerances follow ISO 2768. For the finished product, 19-inch rack geometry is defined by IEC 60297-3-100 and EIA-310, which fix the 44.45 mm U pitch and hole group spacing. Cumulative pitch accuracy over a 42U panel is set on the punch, and it is what determines whether third-party equipment mounts without reaming.
On the machines this means fully enclosed rear fencing, protective covers on all protruding moving parts, laser guarding that halts motion when the protected zone is broken, over-tonnage protection on turret punch presses, and grating-ruler offset-load detection on panel benders.
This is the single most valuable decision in rack production, and the answer is not the same for every panel. Most shops that own both end up sending perforation to the punch and contours to the laser.
| CNC turret punch press | Fiber laser cutting | Roll forming | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Repeated hole arrays | Fastest — multi-tool and nibbling | Slow — pierces every hole | Not applicable |
| Complex contours and one-offs | Limited to available tooling | Fastest — no tooling needed | Not applicable |
| Forming operations | Louvres, ribs, embossing, thread prep | Cutting only | Profile forming only |
| Tooling cost | Punch and die sets required | None | Roll set per profile, high |
| Edge condition | Slight burr, deburr may be needed | Smooth, burr-free | Cut to length |
| Rack parts it suits | Perforated doors, vented panels, cable managers | Custom cut-outs, prototypes, short runs | Mounting uprights, frame sections |
| Best combination | Punch-laser combined machine does both in one clamping, in roughly 40% less floor space than two separate machines | Separate supplier | |
| Does STON supply it? | Yes | Yes | No — different process |
If your rack range is built on roll-formed uprights with bolted-on panels, the cell above covers the panels — which is where the hole count, the labour and the flatness problems actually are. The upright line stays with your existing supplier and we will say so at drawing review.
Figures below describe the direction and mechanism of the change. Actual results depend on your part mix, batch size and shift pattern — we model them against your own drawings before quoting.
| Item | Fiber laser plus press brakes | Turret punch plus panel bender cell |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle on a perforated door | Scales with hole count, every hole pierced | Multi-tool and nibbling, largely independent of hole count |
| Louvres, ribs and embossing | Needs a second machine or manual operation | Completed in the same clamping as the holes |
| Panel flatness after perforation | Heat input plus stress release | Supported table, sequenced punching, over-tonnage protection |
| Coated panel surface | Handling marks between machines | Brush and steel-ball composite table, automatic transfer |
| Four-sided door forming | 2 operators, 4 rotations | 1 operator, single clamping |
| U-pitch accuracy over a 42U panel | Depends on nesting and re-clamping | ±0.1 mm machining accuracy, repeatability approx. ±0.01–0.02 mm |
| Consumables | Laser gas, optics, nozzles | Punch and die wear, longer service intervals |
Payback logic we use with customers: (annual labour released + reduction in rework and scrap + additional saleable output) ÷ installed equipment cost. We build this with your real numbers rather than publishing a headline figure that would not match your plant.
Turret speed to 40 rpm, ±0.1 mm accuracy, X-axis 2500 mm with secondary positioning to 5000 mm. Patented dual-triangle beam mount, double dovetail feeding, independent dual rotary stations, brush and steel-ball composite table.
View SF series →
Perforation, forming and laser contour cutting in one clamping. Roughly 40% less floor space than separate punch and laser machines, and no secondary alignment between the hole array and the cut-out.
View SFL series →
Flywheel-driven striking system for continuous high-frequency punching, 30 rpm turret, over-tonnage protection, stainless-steel edged table. Suited to long runs of a stable perforation pattern.
View JT series →
Folds doors, side panels and plinths from one clamping, up to 2800 mm. Full-electric servo closed-loop control, rapid compensation adjustment for switching between rack heights, grating-ruler offset-load detection.
View press arm type →
Exchange-table fiber laser for custom cut-outs, prototypes and short runs that do not justify tooling. Runs alongside the turret punch rather than replacing it.
View laser unit →
Automatic sheet separation, positioning, unloading and stacking. On perforated panels this matters twice over — it removes handling marks and it keeps the punch fed at its actual cycle rate.
View truss system →Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Qingdao, one hour from major export ports and the airport. Casting, heat treatment, machining, welding, assembly and inspection all happen inside our own 20,000㎡ factory. That is why a configuration change for a perforated door line does not become a six-month subcontracting problem.
Data centre and telecom projects run to fixed installation windows. A stopped turret punch stops every downstream operation in a rack shop, so response time is part of the specification, not an afterthought.
Specifications on this page verified against STON engineering documentation on 4 August 2026. Forming limits are confirmed against your own drawings before quotation. Published on 4 August 2026 · Last updated 4 August 2026 · Reviewed by Vicky Xu, Head of Overseas Sales.
With the real hole pattern we can program the part, return an actual cycle time rather than a brochure figure, and tell you whether a servo or mechanical turret suits your mix.
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