A cold press looks like the simplest machine on a plywood line. Two platens, a hydraulic pump, a stack of panels, no cutting tool anywhere. That simplicity is exactly why so many buyers treat the tonnage figure as the whole decision, and why so many presses arrive either short of daylight, short of platen, or waiting on glue that started to set while the operator was still loading.
Four hydraulic cold presses are listed on this site. They are not four sizes of the same machine. One is long, one is dense, one carries rollers, and one carries three platens in a single frame. Read the numbers in that order and the choice gets much shorter.
The 50 ton machine carries a 3000 × 1300 mm platen. The 120 ton machine carries 2500 × 1250 mm. The one with three feeding rollers is 3050 × 1300 mm at 100 ton. The three stage one holds three platens of 1250 × 1000 mm and still works at 50 ton.
Tonnage and platen size do not move together here. The strongest press has the smallest single platen. The longest platen belongs to the weakest press. That is not an error in the catalogue. It is the first hint that these four machines answer four different questions.
Start with the long one. Plate size 3000 × 1300 mm, maximum pressure 50 ton, plate opening 900–1000 mm, hydraulic power 4 kW, oil cylinder 125 mm × 2 pcs, weight 1900 kg. Packing size 3000 × 1300 × 2300 mm.
Three metres of platen is a panel length decision, not a tonnage decision. A shop pressing 2440 mm boards down the length of the table wants that 3000 mm. A shop pressing door skins or small cabinet parts spends most of the table pressing air, and pays for three metres of steel to do it.
Two cylinders do the work. Remember that number, because the next machine repeats the same 125 mm bore six times over.
The MC120T lists 120 ton of maximum pressure on a 2500 × 1250 mm platen, a maximum platen opening of 1000 mm, a working speed of 200 mm/min, total power 4 kW, and oil cylinders of 125 mm × 6 pcs. Overall dimensions 3000 × 1300 × 2800 mm, weight 3000 kg.
Same bore. More cylinders. The 120 ton figure is reached by adding rams rather than by enlarging them, and the platen shrinks at the same time. Material that needs real clamping force per square metre, and does not need three metres of length, is what this machine was drawn for.
It is also the tallest of the four in shipping terms, 2800 mm against 2300 mm on the 50 ton unit. That difference is a container or a flat rack, decided at the quotation stage and paid for at the port.
Platen opening runs 900–1000 mm on the 50 ton and the three stage unit, and 1000 mm on the 120 ton. On a cold press this figure sets the stack, and the stack sets the cycle.
Count what actually goes into that gap. Panel, glue line, caul plate, the next panel, another glue line, another caul. Two hundred millimetres of opening disappears quickly once cauls are in the stack, and the panels left over are what you press in one cycle.
Buyers who size by tonnage alone tend to discover this in the first week. The press can push. The gap is full. Half the batch is still on the trolley, and the shift plan was written around a cycle that does not exist.
Only the MC120T publishes a working speed: 200 mm/min. The 50 ton, the roller machine and the three stage unit all list their working speed as continuously variable, with no figure attached.
Read that carefully rather than skimming it. A published number invites comparison, and the absence of one is not a zero. It means the closing speed is set on the valve by the operator, which suits shops that press different thicknesses through the day, and frustrates shops that want one repeatable recipe and no argument about who moved the lever.
The three stage machine takes a different route to capacity. Plate size 1250 × 1000 mm × 3 pcs, maximum pressure 50 ton, plate opening 900–1000 mm, oil cylinder Ø125 mm × 2 × 3 pcs, feed cylinder Ø40 × 50 mm × 6 pcs, hydraulic power 4 kW, weight 3000 kg, packing 4100 × 1300 × 1900 mm.
Three separate loads running at once. While one platen is under pressure, the next can be loaded, and the third can be unloaded. On small parts and on long clamp times this layout keeps the operator busy instead of waiting, and it does it on a footprint that stays under four and a half metres of packing length.
What it does not do is press a 2440 mm panel. Three small platens cannot be assembled into one big one.
The MC100T with three feeding rollers lists 100 ton on a 3050 × 1300 mm platen, plate opening 900–1000 mm, oil cylinder Ø100 mm × 6 pcs, hydraulic power 4 kW, weight 3500 kg, packing 3600 × 1500 × 2200 mm.
Six cylinders of a hundred millimetres, on the longest platen in the range. That combination reads like a machine built for full sheets that still has to be fed by hand or by a roller conveyor, and the rollers are the part that saves the shift. Sliding a glued stack across a steel platen is slow, and it is where cauls get knocked out of line.
It is also the heaviest of the four at 3500 kg, which matters to whoever quotes the rigging.
Every one of them lists 4 kW of hydraulic power. Fifty ton, one hundred ton, one hundred and twenty ton, and three platens of fifty ton, all on the same motor figure.
That single line tells you where the engineering money went. Force comes from cylinder area and oil pressure, not from a bigger motor. So the pump is not the specification to argue about, and a supplier who opens the conversation with kilowatts is steering the talk away from platens and daylight.
Voltage is listed as 220V / 380V / 415V on the MC120T. Confirm the supply on your side before the order leaves, because a 4 kW hydraulic pack wired for the wrong voltage is a workshop problem rather than a shipping problem.
A cold press does not cure glue. It holds the joint closed while the adhesive builds enough strength to survive the rest of the line, and every adhesive system has its own figure for how long that takes.
Which means the press you buy is bound to the glue you use. Ask your adhesive supplier for the clamp time at your workshop temperature, then compare that number with how long a cycle takes on the machine you are considering, loading and unloading included. If the clamp time is longer than the cycle, the press is not the constraint. If it is shorter, you are paying for capacity you are not using.
Nobody can answer that for you from a catalogue. It is the one calculation worth doing before the deposit.
Measure the longest panel that ships. That figure alone eliminates two of the four machines, and it costs nothing to take.
Measure the stack height with cauls in place, then compare against 900–1000 mm or 1000 mm of daylight. Write the number down rather than guessing at it in the warehouse.
Write down the clamp time your adhesive supplier gives you, and the number of parts your line moves in a shift. Two of those numbers decide whether three platens beat one long platen for your work.
Take the packing dimensions off the page and put them on the floor plan. A 4100 × 1300 × 1900 mm crate and a 3000 × 1300 × 2300 mm crate do not occupy the same corner of a workshop, and neither one leaves room for a trolley you forgot about.
Then look at what feeds the press and what takes the load off it. A glue spreader sets the film weight the press is holding closed, and a hot press after it decides how much of the curing still has to happen on your floor. The full sequence sits in the plywood production line section, and the four cold presses themselves are collected under cold press.
Platen, daylight, cylinders, cycle. Four numbers, in that order, and the tonnage on the badge stops being the argument it pretends to be.
