Ken, if you have no punch press experience a mechanical punch press is about the most dangerous machine you can add. Frankly if that is a company selling that machine to the public they are insane as the machine will carry full liability along with it. The only way to break the liability chain is to sell it to a dealer or scrap it. I scrapped 3 mechanical punch presses 15 ton and under by removing the crankshafts and control boxes and throwing the parts in different scrap bins at different times so the scrap people never got a functional machine at any time. We could have sold them but the liability is no joke.
It is a cool little press but if there is no tooling you will have to buy it or make it yourself. Tooling for punching steel will have to be heat treated while tooling for punching aluminum or non-metal materials doesn't need heat treat or maybe just have a hardened punch. You also need a way to hold the tooling like die shoes with guide pins to avoid a tooling crash. A surface grinder is needed for sharpening tooling. A short stroke mechanical press makes things happen fast and once you trip the press it will complete a full cycle so no oops are allowed as they can be disastrous.
Don't hesitate to ask me any questions as I have extensive punch press experience.
This is the correct answer in my experience. Punch presses are a great way to lose a lot of money fast in the selling, and the buying. The tooling , unless you have the ability to make it yourself would far exceed the cost of the machine itself. Like any other metalworking machine, tooling costs can double, triple or more the cost of the machine itself.
My advice, leave punch presses alone. Full rotation presses are incredibly dangerous and have accounted for hundreds, or thousands of amputations of body parts to operators.
