Press Brake CNC control - possible?

Have been considering buying a stepper motor and some parts and seeing if i can make them 'function' before i invest the time into the steel to build the machine

I think that's a good plan. Then maybe work on using that motor to operate a CNC backstop, for example, if you have a manual press-brake already.

I got the Ursviken press brake I've been struggling with awhile, making basic bends finally.

Now I'm into building a reusable gui. My biggest problem doing this, is I have not spent much time operating press brakes. But I have seen a few in use. I will see what I can come up with. I want the press operator to be able to draw the profile and view and bend it. And, save and recall project files. I learned a lot by studying the press component which I think andypugh wrote.

@Brad91 I wonder if my Y1, Y2 control logic might perhaps work on a press like you describe, running two glass scales. I had a big struggle coming up with control logic that operated this, but it seems to work now. The press I'm working on has two servo valves tee'd off the pump output with no hydraulic flow divider, so whichever side went the easiest got all the flow. I finally landed on making it slow down the side that is going faster, to keep sync, that seems to work.

In the words of a technician for a commercial press brake control, nobody draws the bends, its a wank factor for the sales staff to add a wow factor. Everybody just creates bend lists.
Zero the axes so x0 (back gauge) is centred on the V and Y0 at the top of the V 
You need to be able to select the knife tool, the v tool, the material (eg mild steel) and the thickness. Your GUI will know the K factor for the material, then you just need a bend list with bend number, back gauge distance and bend angle with a fine adjustment angle as each sheet of  the same material may be different, Your control needs to calculate the distance to move the knife down past the top of the material to get the desired bend eg.
Y move = material_top - bend_distance (bend_angle + adjust_angle).
If its a bit out, tweak the fine adjustment angle for that bend on the first bend of the job.

If you want graphics, create a simulation of the tools, run the bend list through the sim and report any errors if something will foul etc.

How about this?
I drew this first sketch in LibreOffice Draw.
The plan is for most of the fields to be buttons. Touch a bend in the scrollable bends list to jump to that bend. Touch the filename to open the bend list editor which will include load/save etc. buttons. User/Status might open a dialog with login/logout buttons and status/fault log.

Maybe this needs/wants some kind of bar chart displaying tonnage and servo load% near the bottom? The press brake I'm working on does not currently have those values available in hal.

NWE wrote:

The press brake I'm working on ...

We want pictures or videos or smoke signals...

smoke signals image missing /media/kunena/emoticons/smile.png
The part laying on the white book was the first steel this machine bent in years. Some of the photos turned out tiny. I'll have to try again later.