IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(MUSIC).
Hi, I'm Gabriel Corbett, and welcome to
| | 00:06 |
Sheet Metal Design with SolidWorks.
Sheet metal is a complex industry and
| | 00:11 |
understanding the basic processes and
fundamentals is essential to designing
| | 00:15 |
parts that are easy and efficient to
manufacture.
| | 00:18 |
SolidWorks has assembled a great set of
tools for working with sheet metal.
| | 00:22 |
However, it's up to us the designers to
use these tools to create parts that are
| | 00:25 |
designed well.
In this course, I'll go over some of the
| | 00:28 |
background on sheet metal processes and
the techniques to design manufacturing
| | 00:33 |
ready parts.
I'll start by showing you how to design
| | 00:36 |
basic sheet metal and cover all the common
tools in the sheet metal package.
| | 00:40 |
From there we'll expand our knowledge into
more complex, multi-body, sheet metal
| | 00:44 |
design techniques, and assemblies.
We'll also go over drawing and
| | 00:47 |
documentation techniques, and cover the
steps required to produce cut patterns,
| | 00:51 |
and files, to send out for fabrication.
As a bonus, we'll also be touring a sheet
| | 00:56 |
metal fabrication company, and learning
about the machinery and processes that are
| | 00:59 |
required to build sheet metal parts.
I'll cover what really goes on behind the
| | 01:03 |
scenes on how to design parts that are
ready for manufacturing.
| | 01:07 |
Now let's get started with Sheet Metal
Design with SolidWorks.
| | 01:13 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 |
If you're a premium member of lynda.com,
you have access to the exercise files used
| | 00:05 |
throughout this title.
If you download the exercise files to your
| | 00:08 |
desktop, or anywhere else in your file
system, when you open the file, you'll see
| | 00:11 |
the file structure listed from Chapters
one through eight.
| | 00:14 |
If you open any one of the chapters,
you'll see the files used in that chapter.
| | 00:18 |
If you go to chapter two, for instance,
you can see each movie has a corresponding
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start file.
Or if you don't see a start file there
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we're starting with a blank document.
If you see it ending with a dot fin, that
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means it's a finished part at the end of
the movie.
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If you look at the higher level chapters,
like for instance chapter seven.
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We have assemblers who are working on and
each one of those assemblies is located
| | 00:39 |
inside of a folder named after the movie
title.
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If you're not a premium subscriber to
lynda.com, you don't have access to the
| | 00:51 |
exercise files.
But you can follow along from scratch with
| | 00:54 |
your own assets.
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|
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1. Interface and Sheet Metal BasicsLooking at sheet metal tools| 00:00 |
By default, the Sheet Metal tools are not
shown in SolidWorks.
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So we need to activate the Sheet Metal
ribbon.
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Also besides using the tools in the
ribbon, we can also access the Sheet Metal
| | 00:10 |
toolbar from the file system.
To get started, let's go ahead and start
| | 00:14 |
up with a new file.
Click on New, click on Part, click on OK.
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And notice the ribbon bar.
We've got Features, Sketch, and a few others.
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But we don't see Sheet Metal.
So right-click on any one of these tabs
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and you'll see all the available toolbars
that we can turn on, all the available
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ribbon bars.
And we need Sheet Metal, so click on that.
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And notice that just gets added to the
list of tabs.
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See there?
We can also access it from the file
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system, so if you see this small little
arrow here at the top.
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If I mouse over it, it does a little fly
out.
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And if I want to keep that out, I can go
ahead and push on that push pin at the
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very end.
Then under Insert.
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Come down to Sheet Metal and I've got the
available tools here.
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I can also right click anywhere in this
gray area of the screen next to the
| | 00:59 |
(UNKNOWN) system's logo.
And I can see all of the available tool
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bars that I can turn on and one of them
happens to be Sheet Metal.
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Click on that and the Sheet Metal ribbon
or bar shows up.
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And I can drag it around the screen and I
can dock it in different places on the
| | 01:14 |
screen wherever I want.
If you don't want it go ahead and click on
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the red x and it goes away.
Solidworks has a full set of tools for
| | 01:22 |
working with Sheet Metal as well as some
handy tools for converting parts to Sheet Metal.
| | 01:26 |
The key thing to remember is for the best
parts, start them as native Sheet Metal designs.
| | 01:31 |
So load the Sheet Metal toolbar and let's
get started.
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| Using and customizing the Ribbon| 00:00 |
The ribbon is your go to place for all the
sheet metal tools.
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From the start there are lots of great
tools available, however you can also
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customize the ribbon with more tools to
suit our needs.
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To get started let's go over the basic
tool locations.
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At the top here you see there are only 2
buttons that are actually active, it's
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base flange tab and the forming tool.
And when we get started with designing a
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sheet metal part using the base or flange
feature, these other tools will become available.
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We also can turn on other tools and tool
palettes.
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We can do that by right-clicking on any
one of the tabs and coming down to the
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very bottom here and click on Customize
Command Manager.
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And this allows us to completely customize
our interface.
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We can show or hide toolbars, we can click
on different shortcut bars, we can go to commands.
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And the Commands folder here you can see
we have a Sheet Metal tab.
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Click on it.
And these are all the tools that can be in
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this part of the ribbon, or I can actually
add those to other ribbons, so in this
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case here, I'll just grab a tool that's
not up there, like for instance, corner
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trim, and just drag it up, and there you
see it just adds to that ribbon, and while
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I'm in that mode I can also.
Rearrange things.
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So I can put it over here, I can add
things to different parts of the toolbar.
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I can drag things out, drag them back.
And rearrange it however I'd like to see
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it from where I'm working, you know, put
the tools you're using the most up front.
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I can also go, for instance, to the sketch
tab.
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And you can see these are all the basic
sketch tools that are available.
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And I can come over here to the sketch
toolbar, and if I wanted to I could for
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instance grab the center line command, and
I could drag it directly below the line command.
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I use that quite a bit so it's a lot more
handy for me to actually be able to click
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on it with one click verses clicking on
the drop down arrow, and then grabbing the
| | 01:43 |
center line from there.
Once you're done with selecting the
| | 01:47 |
different commands, I can also go to
different menus, keyboard shortcuts, mouse
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gestures and other options.
When you're done with that click OK, and
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you can see the toolbar's been changed.
I can also dock or re-dock the ribbon.
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If I click up here in the top, I can grab
it and pull it out and this happens a lot
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for people who are just getting started
with Solidworks, is they accidentally
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undock the ribbon.
And they're not sure how to redock it.
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So let me go over that real quick.
As I click on with my left mouse button on
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the ribbon, you can see that there's these
3 icons that show up.
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One over here, one up here, and one over
here.
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And those are my 3 locations that actually
can redock The Command Manager.
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So I'm going to put it right back here at
the top, and it'll go over that button and
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it re-docks back up to the top.
The Ribbon is a convenient tool pal that
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can be moved and customized to your needs.
Layout the tools you need most and let's
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start designing some sheet metal parts.
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| Understanding sheet metal| 00:00 |
So, what makes sheet metal different from
other parts designed in SolidWorks?
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Okay, so let's go over the basics.
Number one, constant thickness.
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All sheet metal starts out as flat
material and needs to be cut to size via
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laser, punch press, stamping press or
shearer.
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Because material either comes in standard
thicknesses, we need to choose one of
| | 00:18 |
those available gauges.
Next, we need to bend the material with
| | 00:22 |
specialized tooling using standard
raduis'.
| | 00:24 |
It's best to design with standard tooling
to avoid needing you buy custom tools that
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are both cost and lead time to your
design.
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Let's go over some basic terms Sheet
metal.
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Number one is thickness.
Thickness is the material, gauge thickness
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you are going to select, when you first
start off making a Sheet metal part.
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The bend radius is determined from these
tooling you're going to be using to bend
| | 00:44 |
your part.
Standard bends radiuses are 030, 060, 090.
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Eighth inch, quarter inch, 3 8ths, half
inch.
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And those are just a few of the available
radiuses that your sheet metal supplier
| | 00:54 |
will probably have.
The k factor is determined by selecting
| | 00:58 |
the material, the bend radius and the type
of tooling you have.
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A lot of times your sheet metal supplier
will be able to provide you the correct
| | 01:04 |
K-factor, bend deduction or bend allowance
depending on how you want to use these values.
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The bend allowance, again, is the amount
of material or the arc length of the bend.
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And we can look those up in tables and
we're going to look at a few in just a few minutes.
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The bending was always determined from the
flap to how much you are going to bend
| | 01:22 |
that flange up.
So, in this case here, it's from the flat,
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in this case, we have a 90 degree bend.
The flange length is again from the flat
| | 01:30 |
to the end of the flange.
The final thing must be a mold line
| | 01:34 |
measurement that term not really use quite
as much but that's the length up to the
| | 01:39 |
edge of the bend.
I've included a few different tables for
| | 01:42 |
you to look up the gauge thicknesses of
the various materials.
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I've included both the aluminum table, the
steel table, as well as the stainless
| | 01:48 |
steel table.
And these are standardized thicknesses of gauge.
| | 01:51 |
This is just a subset of the different
values.
| | 01:53 |
They're quite more extensive, if you open
the PDF documents that we've included in
| | 01:57 |
the Exercise files.
If you look at a couple different gauges,
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let's go down here on the aluminium table
and look at 12 gauge.
| | 02:03 |
You can see it's 080 thickness.
If you look on the steel table, the same
| | 02:07 |
12 gauge materials is actually 0.104.
So, the same gauge thickness is actually
| | 02:12 |
different from material to material.
So, make sure you plan on that and you
| | 02:16 |
can't easily switch between two material
gauges and expect the material to be
| | 02:19 |
exactly the same size.
Here's an example of some break tooling.
| | 02:23 |
You can see we have an upper die, which
pushes into the material, at the bottom of
| | 02:27 |
the upper die you have a bend radius,
which is going to determine the bend
| | 02:30 |
radius of your sheet metal piece.
Your material, which then spans across the
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two sections of the lower die, and
generally, we want to make sure that our
| | 02:37 |
thickness of material.
And our lower die or our flange length is
| | 02:41 |
four times the thickness in the material.
Otherwise, it won't hit these corners of
| | 02:46 |
the lower die and you'll have an issue
that it doesn't form correctly.
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So, make sure that the flange length of
your material is a minimum of four times
| | 02:54 |
your material thickness.
Now, you can make it smaller if you need to.
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However, it might be a matter of making
custom tooling or having to remove part of
| | 03:01 |
the flange after your building the part
and that's going to add cost and lead time.
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The back edge can move in and out to
determine the length of your flange.
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Over here on the right you can see the
completed bend and the material comes up
| | 03:13 |
out of the back gauge and forms into the V
shape.
| | 03:15 |
This is an example of goose neck tooling.
Sometimes when you want to make a relief
| | 03:19 |
flange, where the material actually comes
up over and around, you need to have some clearance.
| | 03:24 |
If you use standardized straight tooling
here, this flange would hit the backside
| | 03:29 |
of the tool.
So, in this case here, you've got this
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goose neck die that comes in here and
allows the material to form around there
| | 03:35 |
and provides a little bit of a relief.
Keep in mind, when you're working with
| | 03:38 |
gooseneck dies we have to make sure we
maintain a certain distance between the
| | 03:42 |
first flange and the return flange to
allow the dye to get in here to actually
| | 03:46 |
form this bend.
Here's an example of three different bend
| | 03:51 |
radiuses on the exact same piece of
material.
| | 03:53 |
If you look over here, the flange length
is 1 and a half inches and we have 1 and a
| | 03:58 |
half inches of material here.
So, if you flatten this out without a bend
| | 04:01 |
radius, it'd be 3 inches total.
But as you can see by adding a quarter
| | 04:04 |
inch radius bend the flat length is
actually 2.44.
| | 04:07 |
As you go up in bend radius thickness, so
in this case we have a 3 8ths bend and
| | 04:14 |
this flat pattern is actually 2.38.
And when you go to a half inch it comes
| | 04:18 |
down to 2.33.
So, as the bend radius goes up, the flat
| | 04:22 |
pattern gets shorter and shorter.
This is an example of a bend deduction
| | 04:27 |
table for an 030 radius tooling at 90
degrees, and you could see each value,
| | 04:32 |
say, 16-gauge for the thickness of the
material has a different set back.
| | 04:36 |
Steel and stainless steel have the same
thickness.
| | 04:38 |
However, a little bit different set back.
Where if you go here to aluminum, we're
| | 04:42 |
looking at a much different set back value
because the material bends and forms differently.
| | 04:47 |
Make sure when you're designing a
SolidWorks, that you choose the correct
| | 04:49 |
thickness and set back values so that your
flat pattern will be the correct size when
| | 04:53 |
they come to build your parts.
This is an example of different K-Factor values.
| | 04:57 |
As you can see, as the bend radius gets
close to three times the material
| | 05:01 |
thickness, all those values end up going
close to 0.5.
| | 05:05 |
These values are just reference values.
However, you might want to check with
| | 05:09 |
their materials applied if you want to
choose the K-Factor method for determining
| | 05:12 |
the flange length.
Finally, I have included a setback.XL file
| | 05:16 |
that allows you to type in a material
thickness, type in the bend radius and
| | 05:20 |
type in the angle as it's going to
calculate for you the setback.
| | 05:23 |
These values are going to be approximate,
however, they're going to do a pretty nice
| | 05:25 |
job of getting you close to the values you
need.
| | 05:28 |
This works great for thicker material or
odd-sized bend angles.
| | 05:32 |
When working with solid Sheet metal, keep
in mind that the computer can design anything.
| | 05:35 |
However, we need to stick with standard
tooling and materials whenever possible.
| | 05:39 |
Hopefully these tables will be a good
reference for you in the future.
| | 05:42 |
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|
|
2. Sheet Metal FlangesCreating a base feature| 00:00 |
The Base Flange tab feature is the primary
sheet metal creation tool.
| | 00:04 |
This same tool can create three types of
flanges based on the sketch geometry provided.
| | 00:09 |
The most basic of these tools is the
enclosed boundary sketch.
| | 00:12 |
To get started, let's go over the basics
of creating any part in Solidworks.
| | 00:16 |
There are generally six steps for creating
most features in this software.
| | 00:19 |
And sheet metal is no different.
The six steps are the following: Number
| | 00:24 |
one, select a face or plane to draw on.
Number two, start a new sketch on that
| | 00:30 |
face or plane.
Number three, draw some geometry, and in
| | 00:32 |
this case, we need to have an enclosed
boundary.
| | 00:35 |
Number four, tie that geometry into the
origin.
| | 00:38 |
Number five, Add Relationships.
We want all our lines to be black and
| | 00:43 |
fully defined.
Blue lines are under-defined or undefined
| | 00:46 |
and if you see yellow red lines that means
you've caused an error in the sketch.
| | 00:50 |
Go ahead and delete the lines or delete
any relationships you might have added to
| | 00:54 |
fix the issue.
We want to make sure other lines are black
| | 00:58 |
in color and fully defined.
Number six, create the features.
| | 01:01 |
There are many features in SolidWorks, and
almost all of them start in this exact
| | 01:05 |
same six-step process, so in this case,
we're going to be choosing the sheet metal
| | 01:10 |
Base Flange Tab Tool.
To get started, let's pick a plane.
| | 01:15 |
In the View area, you can see as I mouse
over the different planes, they highlight
| | 01:19 |
in the View window.
I can then choose a plane like the top
| | 01:22 |
plane, and if I click on it with my left
mouse button, I can either choose to start
| | 01:26 |
to sketch on it or I can show it.
Sometimes it's nice kind of show the
| | 01:30 |
planes first, so that they stay visible
while I am doing other work.
| | 01:34 |
I can show any of these planes, I can show
all three.
| | 01:36 |
It's a nice way to kind of get a good
understanding of what's going on in the
| | 01:40 |
user environment.
See all the planes and see which one you
| | 01:43 |
want to get started with.
If you see a plane, you can go ahead and
| | 01:47 |
right-click on that plane, and click on
Sketch, which will start a new sketch.
| | 01:51 |
Or, over here in the tree, I can click on
the Plane, a start a sketch here.
| | 01:56 |
Or alternatively I can come up here to the
Ribbon, choose Sketch, and then choose one
| | 02:02 |
of the planes.
Once you do that, we're in the sketch
| | 02:05 |
environment, we know we're in the sketch
environment because we have one: the Exit
| | 02:09 |
Sketch button, up here, as well as Cancel,
and you can see that the history bar here
| | 02:14 |
is directly above whatever sketch you
happen to be in.
| | 02:16 |
I happen to be in sketch seven, but your
sketch might be saying one, two, or three
| | 02:20 |
depending on how many times you might have
opened or worked with the sketch.
| | 02:23 |
So don't worry the name doesn't really
matter.
| | 02:25 |
I can also go back and hide these various
other planes, when I have done using them.
| | 02:31 |
Now, I want to draw an enclose boundary.
So, I am going to choose the Center Point
| | 02:37 |
Rectangle Tool.
I am going to click on that drop down
| | 02:39 |
arrow next to the rectangle and choose the
second one down which is center rectangle.
| | 02:43 |
Come over to view window, click right on
the origin, and draw the rectangle.
| | 02:47 |
Next, I'm going to come up here and grab
the Smart Dimension Tool, and I'm just
| | 02:52 |
going to add a few dimensions.
In this case here I am going to get ten by eight.
| | 02:56 |
And I'm just typing 8.0 and hitting enter
on my keypad to quickly Select that
| | 03:03 |
dimension and close that window.
When you are done adding dimensions and
| | 03:08 |
notice you've got a fully defined sketch,
all the lines are black.
| | 03:12 |
I'm moving the window around by holding
the middle mouse button so I'm able to
| | 03:15 |
spin and scroll to see my model.
Let's go up here to the Sheet Metal tab.
| | 03:23 |
Click on Base Flange tab, and as soon as I
do so, it gives me a little highlight of a
| | 03:28 |
preview of what I'm looking to create, and
I can type in a certain thickness in material.
| | 03:33 |
In this case here I'm going to type in
0.0625.
| | 03:38 |
One 16th of an inch.
That'll be the thickness of my sheet metal.
| | 03:41 |
Next is the bend allowance.
So when sheet metal gets bent, or formed,
| | 03:45 |
it has a certain of bend deduction or bend
allowance that's added to those bends.
| | 03:50 |
And I can choose to either use the
K-Factor system and actually type in the
| | 03:54 |
number that I need there.
Or use Bend Allowance, Bend Deduction,
| | 03:58 |
Bend Calculation or Bend Table.
These values come from tables or look-up
| | 04:02 |
values provided for you by a Sheet-Metal
Company you might be working with.
| | 04:06 |
So these are not made up arbitrarily.
However k-factor, if you use it 0.5, will
| | 04:11 |
generally always work, but generally when
you flatten out the flat pattern, it will
| | 04:15 |
not be the correct size.
So you gotta make sure you go back to your
| | 04:18 |
parts, and change it to, for instance, to
a bend deduction, and then type in the
| | 04:22 |
value you'd get from a table or from
talking with your sheet metal supplier.
| | 04:26 |
This is really important when you actually
go to produce your parts.
| | 04:28 |
Because, if you don't, your parts will be
the wrong size.
| | 04:31 |
And you'll have all types of issues in the
future.
| | 04:33 |
So definitely pay attention to bend
deduction.
| | 04:36 |
And make sure you're getting the right
values in for the right thickness and material.
| | 04:39 |
because each thickness, each angle will
determine the different bend deduction.
| | 04:43 |
Down here at the bottom is the Auto Relief
type, so when we put a edge flange on a part.
| | 04:49 |
If it doesn't fully extend past the edge
of the part, it'll then get cut it on the corners.
| | 04:54 |
And it's asking us if we want to have
Obround, a tear or rectangular cut.
| | 04:58 |
And we'll show that in the future here,
but I'm going to go ahead and choose Obround.
| | 05:02 |
And that's going to give us a little
rounded corners in our relief.
| | 05:06 |
Once we're done with all those, go ahead
and choose the green check mark.
| | 05:09 |
That will save out that part.
And if I can hold down my middle mouse
| | 05:12 |
button, I can spin it around, take a look
and see what I've created.
| | 05:17 |
And now I'm ready to go on to the next
step.
| | 05:20 |
The Base Flange Tool is the real workhorse
of the sheet metal tools.
| | 05:23 |
Almost all sheet metal parts will start
off using this tool.
| | 05:26 |
Depending on the sketch geometry, one of
the basic features will be created.
| | 05:31 |
Now that we've covered the base feature,
let's see what else this tool can do in
| | 05:34 |
the next two movies.
| | 05:35 |
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| Looking at the Flange tool| 00:00 |
The Flange tool is the same tool that we
chose before to start a base, however this
| | 00:04 |
time we leave the sketch open.
Instead of generating a flat part that's
| | 00:08 |
ready to add bends to, we start with a
flange that's already bent.
| | 00:11 |
When laying out a sketch don't worry about
adding in bend radiuses.
| | 00:15 |
The software will allow us to add these in
later, so just start with a basic shape
| | 00:19 |
with hard corners.
To get started, we need to start a sketch,
| | 00:23 |
and this time I'm going to choose a sketch
from up here and I'm going to choose the
| | 00:28 |
top plane.
From the top plane, it spins around so i'm
| | 00:31 |
looking straight at it and I'm good to go.
This time I'm going to start with the line command.
| | 00:36 |
And I'm a start right at the origin.
Draw a line out to the right.
| | 00:39 |
And the length doesn't really matter in
this case.
| | 00:41 |
I'm going to go about 4 inches.
Click and go up, let's say about 2 inches
| | 00:48 |
and go over to the right.
I'll say about 0.75 and the number doesn't
| | 00:52 |
exactly have to be correct.
Just get, roughly there.
| | 00:55 |
When you're done, go ahead and just hit
Escape, or you can continue adding more
| | 00:59 |
lines and more flanges as you go around.
I'm going to hit Escape, takes me out of
| | 01:03 |
that tool, and I'm ready to create a
flange.
| | 01:06 |
Let's go up to Sheet Metal, click on the
tab, and click on Base Flange tab.
| | 01:11 |
As soon as you do that, it spins it around
3-D and gives me a little representation
| | 01:16 |
of what's going to happen.
I can click on this arrow here and drag it
| | 01:19 |
up or drag it down, your choice, and it
gives you a little heads up display of how
| | 01:24 |
long that flange is going to be.
I have it about 2 inches, click OK, and I
| | 01:27 |
can spin that around in 3-D, see what it's
going to look like.
| | 01:31 |
And notice, even though I drew hard
corners, or sharp corners, it actually
| | 01:35 |
adds in a bend radius, and that's
determined by the Base Flange tab dialog box.
| | 01:40 |
So, under Direction 1, it's asking me how
far do I want to go and what conditions.
| | 01:45 |
So I have the 2 inches in there, and it's
doing a blind condition, which means
| | 01:49 |
whatever value I want to type in is
exactly how far we can go.
| | 01:53 |
We also have options for up to vertex, up
to surface, offset from surface and
| | 01:57 |
mid-plane as well.
Direction 2 allows me to create that same
| | 02:01 |
flange, go in the opposite direction, and
same thing.
| | 02:06 |
I can type in a distance, and you can see
that flange gets longer in that direction
| | 02:10 |
as well, but in this case here, I was just
going to use the Direction 1 and come down here.
| | 02:15 |
I have the option to choose the thickness
of the sheet metal, the bend radius, in
| | 02:19 |
this case here I'm going to type in 0.030,
which is a very standard bend radius.
| | 02:24 |
And I can choose the direction of where I
want to have my flange.
| | 02:27 |
Notice if I zoom in here, that sketch is
actually on the inside of that bend flange.
| | 02:33 |
If I click on this check box it swaps.
It puts the entire sheet metal flange on
| | 02:38 |
the inside of the sketch, versus on the
outside of the sketch.
| | 02:41 |
So you can switch between the two,
depending on what type of design you're making.
| | 02:45 |
We cover this in the last movie a little
bit, as far as the bend allowance and the K-Factors.
| | 02:49 |
K-Factor's great to start with, but it's
not going to give you the correct size
| | 02:52 |
flat pattern.
I always recommend using the bend
| | 02:55 |
deduction in getting that value from your
sheet metal supplier.
| | 02:58 |
But in this case here, we'll keep it as
K-Factor, because K-Factor will always work.
| | 03:03 |
When you're happy with what your flange
will look like.
| | 03:05 |
Go ahead and click on OK.
And there you go, our first flange.
| | 03:11 |
And looks pretty good.
Let me go ahead and turn off the shadows
| | 03:14 |
so we don't see that.
And, we don't need the RealView graphics either.
| | 03:18 |
Those are nice for when you want to look
at something that's real fancy on your
| | 03:21 |
screen and you want to maybe do a screen
capture or something like that.
| | 03:25 |
But, in reality, those two features
actually add some overhead to the computer
| | 03:29 |
and slow it down, so I generally turn them
off when I'm working on sheet metal parts
| | 03:33 |
because things can get pretty complicated
and you don't want to slow the computer
| | 03:36 |
down unnecessarily.
Once you've created a flange, we can
| | 03:40 |
continue on here, or we can go back to
that flange and modify it.
| | 03:44 |
To change this flange, notice, I've got a
feature called Base Flange 1.
| | 03:48 |
Now, if you've created several flanges, or
if you've erased and started again, this
| | 03:51 |
could be Base Flange 2, 3, 4, doesn't
really matter, as long as there's a base
| | 03:55 |
flange, you can click on the little plus
next to it, expand it out, and you can
| | 04:00 |
see, there's the sketch.
Sketch one that created that flange.
| | 04:03 |
And then here are the two bins used to
actually bend that flange.
| | 04:07 |
And I can edit each one of these
individually, if I needed to, to adjust
| | 04:10 |
the K factor, to adjust the bend deduction
or any of the other features inside of there.
| | 04:15 |
If I want to change the sketch, go ahead
and click on Sketch 1, and notice this
| | 04:19 |
little pop-up window shows up.
We choose that very first icon called Edit Sketch.
| | 04:24 |
I hit the space bar, that will bring up
all the orientations available, I'm
| | 04:27 |
going to click on this one here called
Normal To.
| | 04:30 |
So I'm looking straight at it and I can
continue to add on, so I can make a bend
| | 04:34 |
this way, maybe one over to here.
When you're done, hit Escape and I notice
| | 04:39 |
I can use any of the basic tools up here
like lines and arcs to create the shape.
| | 04:44 |
But one condition though, is it needs to
stay an open boundary and it cannot
| | 04:47 |
intersect itself.
When you're happy with your shape, go
| | 04:50 |
ahead and exit out of the sketch.
And, those extra bends will be added to
| | 04:55 |
your feature.
If used correctly, and you can think about
| | 04:58 |
your design ahead of time, the flange tool
can make your job much easier.
| | 05:02 |
Any number of bends can be incorporated
into one feature.
| | 05:04 |
However, simplicity is your friend.
And remember, each bend adds cost and complexity.
| | 05:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating tabs| 00:01 |
To create a tab, you need to have an
existing sheet metal part.
| | 00:04 |
Lucky thing for us, we've got one open.
We open at 2.3, and that should be under
| | 00:09 |
the Exercise files.
If not, it should be an easy part to create.
| | 00:12 |
The Tab tool operates the same as the Base
tool.
| | 00:14 |
However, we need to tie it into an
existing flat face of a part to create a tab.
| | 00:19 |
To get started, let's choose a face to add
on to.
| | 00:21 |
We can choose any of the faces we'd like,
this one, that one, this one, I can flip
| | 00:27 |
the part over, choose any of these faces
as well.
| | 00:29 |
But in this case here, let's just go ahead
and choose this big face here.
| | 00:34 |
And I'm going to come up here to the
pop-up window and choose this very second
| | 00:38 |
icon on the bottom row called Sketch, and
I'm going to click on the space bar to
| | 00:43 |
bring up the Orientation window and click
on this Normal to.
| | 00:47 |
That allows me to look straight down on my
part and see exactly what I'm going to be
| | 00:50 |
creating on that flat face.
I'm going to start with the Line command
| | 00:55 |
and choose this upper corner here, and go
ahead and just draw out a little bit of
| | 00:58 |
our shape here.
So, draw up, over, down.
| | 01:05 |
And it doesn't exactly what we create,
we're just practicing creating the shape.
| | 01:10 |
And when I get down to this point here, a
lot of people will hit Escape and get out
| | 01:13 |
of that command thinking it's complete.
But in reality, we need to connect this
| | 01:17 |
point to this point with a line.
So, let's go back to that line command,
| | 01:21 |
grab that line tool, and connect the to/g.
It needs to be a complete shape.
| | 01:25 |
Now, look closely at this bottom
right-hand corner and see that I actually
| | 01:28 |
made a mistake.
Let's go ahead and zoom in, see what happened.
| | 01:32 |
Oh, there's a tiny little line that got
created.
| | 01:34 |
And sometimes that happens when you just
double-click a little too fast, and you
| | 01:38 |
create this little line, which will cause
errors in your design.
| | 01:41 |
Click on the line, hit Delete, and clear
it out.
| | 01:44 |
That's actually the number one mistake
when you're creating flat patterns and,
| | 01:47 |
and shapes, is that you'll have a small
little line or point somewhere in your
| | 01:51 |
design which will be an error when you
create the Flanger tab.
| | 01:55 |
Once you have a nice enclosed boundary.
Let's go ahead and go up to Sheet Metal
| | 01:59 |
and click on the Base Flange Tab button.
And you can see if you spin it around 3D,
| | 02:04 |
I'm spinning that just by holding down the
middle mouse button, it's going to create
| | 02:08 |
the shape.
It gives us a preview.
| | 02:09 |
Notice the thickness, the k factor, and
auto-relief have all been chosen by
| | 02:15 |
default, because they're extending an
existing flange or base that's been created.
| | 02:21 |
So, that's just fine with us.
Go ahead and click on OK to create shape.
| | 02:25 |
Notice, we didn't add any dimensions.
And that's okay, because we're just
| | 02:28 |
playing with the feature.
Once you created the first feature, we can
| | 02:31 |
go ahead and add other tabs to different
faces.
| | 02:34 |
How about this one here?
Let's click on that face.
| | 02:36 |
Go ahead and start a sketch.
And click on the Spacebar.
| | 02:40 |
This time, I'm going to choose the line
command again, but I can't start on the origin.
| | 02:48 |
I need to start up here, a little bit up
the flange/g.
| | 02:51 |
Start with my line, come up, and I can go
this way for a little while, extend that
| | 02:56 |
line and come over here, and continue that
flange.
| | 03:02 |
And make sure you close it off by
connecting the last two dots.
| | 03:05 |
And let's look at that in 3D, what's
going to happen.
| | 03:07 |
In this corner here, if I were to try to
bring this point down to the origin, it
| | 03:12 |
would cause an error because this bend
region here.
| | 03:14 |
So, I'm actually limited to where I can
start that to this point right here where
| | 03:19 |
that actual bend ends.
So, you see I snapped onto that point
| | 03:22 |
where the bend end.
It doesn't interfere with the bend region,
| | 03:25 |
and you've got a nice bend area there that
solvers can figure out.
| | 03:29 |
And if you do have an issue in the future,
you can always try moving this point where
| | 03:33 |
it connects just a little bit further up,
so, there's absolutely no problem with any
| | 03:38 |
kind of the bend region.
You can also add in circles or holes.
| | 03:44 |
We can add in a rectangular feature, any
other shape.
| | 03:48 |
As long as you have one enclose outside
boundary and enclose interior boundaries,
| | 03:54 |
you should be good to go.
When you're happy with it, click on Sheet
| | 03:56 |
Metal, go to Base Flange tab, creates the
shape.
| | 04:00 |
Click on OK, and there we go.
Now, we've got a couple issues here.
| | 04:05 |
One is we have a hole very close to the
edge of the part, which will probably
| | 04:08 |
cause us an error, or some type of an
issue later on.
| | 04:11 |
So, you want to basically go back and
double check your flanges, your tabs, and
| | 04:15 |
make sure everything is going to be okay.
To do so, let's go back to that tab.
| | 04:19 |
Click on the Plus.
Look at the feature or the sketch that
| | 04:23 |
created that.
Click on it with the Left Mouse button.
| | 04:26 |
Click on Edit Sketch.
And then I can go over here and move some
| | 04:30 |
of these features around.
Drag the circle, get it further away from
| | 04:34 |
the edge, and everything is looking good.
I can go in here and add dimensions now to
| | 04:38 |
finalize that sketch.
And when your done, exit out of the sketch
| | 04:42 |
and there you go.
Got a nice tab, and continue building onto
| | 04:47 |
that sheet metal part.
The Tab tool extends flat faces, and can
| | 04:51 |
easily add detail to your sheet metal part
without changing the original base or flange.
| | 04:57 |
As part of the base Flange Tab tool set,
this is the third type of this fundamental feature.
| | 05:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making an edge flange| 00:00 |
So once you have a sheet metal part, the
next logical step is to add edge flanges.
| | 00:04 |
To take that flat part, and add in some
bends.
| | 00:07 |
If you already have a part with bends,
don't worry.
| | 00:10 |
You can add more.
To get started, choose a straight edge of
| | 00:13 |
the part.
And choose the Edge Flange tool.
| | 00:15 |
You can choose the tool first.
However, like many things in SolidWorks.
| | 00:19 |
If you pre-select the entities, it speeds
things up a bit.
| | 00:22 |
And you get a nice visual representation
as soon as you launch the tool.
| | 00:26 |
Let's choose this edge up here and go
ahead and click on Edge Flange.
| | 00:30 |
You can see a little arrow that pops up
and wherever I click it just gives us a
| | 00:35 |
nice representation of what's going to
happen there.
| | 00:37 |
And you can see the bend region.
Spin it around in 3D, see exactly what's
| | 00:42 |
going on there and take a look at some of
these options.
| | 00:45 |
So first things first, the bend radius is
determined from whenever we created that
| | 00:50 |
first sheet metal feature.
In this case here, we've got an 029 radius.
| | 00:55 |
As far as the angle, I can use the arrows,
up and down.
| | 00:58 |
And you can see in your screen as I hold
down these arrow keys, it will bend back
| | 01:03 |
and forth.
Or I can even just type in a number.
| | 01:06 |
For instance, maybe 60 degrees.
And you can see the nice bend where it is.
| | 01:12 |
In this case here, they'll also use 90
degrees.
| | 01:14 |
Change it back.
And I come down here to Flange Length.
| | 01:18 |
By default it uses the blind condition.
I also have a few others like Up to Vertex
| | 01:23 |
or Up to an Edge.
However, because we're just getting
| | 01:26 |
started with the sheet metal part, Blind's
probably what we're going to be using.
| | 01:29 |
Now, I can choose how I'm going to define
the length of that flange.
| | 01:33 |
So in this case here I've got 2.0 which I
type in, and down here below that I get a
| | 01:38 |
choice of I can scroll it up and down but
I can also choose do I want to use the
| | 01:43 |
outer virtual sharp, the inner virtual
sharp, or to a tangent bend?
| | 01:48 |
So it just continues to change that length
of that flange depending on which scenario
| | 01:53 |
you like to use.
I always choose the first one here.
| | 01:56 |
For, the virtual sharp on the outside.
For flange position, again, we have a lot
| | 02:01 |
of different options of how we want to do
that.
| | 02:04 |
I'm going to zoom in.
On that bend area, to take a look closer.
| | 02:08 |
The very first option here is called
Material Inside.
| | 02:11 |
What that means is, the flange itself that
we started with, or that base feature,
| | 02:15 |
comes right to the edge, and the new
flange we're going to be creating on that
| | 02:20 |
edge flange, actually will end at that
same edge that we started with.
| | 02:25 |
If I choose the next option here as far as
Material Outside, watch what happens.
| | 02:30 |
Click on that.
It actually pushes that entire feature out.
| | 02:34 |
So that the inside edge is now aligned
with the outside edge of the original bass flange.
| | 02:38 |
Or I can choose, I want both the bend
region and the bend outside.
| | 02:43 |
I have a few more options for bending up
to a virtual sharp or up to a tangency and
| | 02:48 |
those happen to do a lot more with
irregular bends or irregular bend angles.
| | 02:53 |
The most common are going to be your
Material Inside, Material Outside or Bend
| | 02:59 |
Outside conditions this case here let's go
ahead and choose Material Inside I also
| | 03:04 |
have the option for Trim Side Bands or
Offsets.
| | 03:06 |
When you're working with complicated bend
areas, Trim Outside Bends can really help out.
| | 03:11 |
But in this case here, it's not going to
do much.
| | 03:13 |
Offset, however, if I click on that, I can
choose exactly how far I'd like to offset
| | 03:19 |
that bend.
I'm going to type in 0.375.
| | 03:22 |
And you can see, it just adds a little
extra material before it does the bend.
| | 03:27 |
Also, while I'm working in this mode, if I
add one more edge to my feature, clicking
| | 03:32 |
on this one, see what happens?
It extends both edges, and it creates a
| | 03:36 |
miter flange between the too.
That can be really handy, and save you a
| | 03:39 |
lot of time, when doing multiple edges at
the same time.
| | 03:41 |
And, it even works with the offset
command.
| | 03:44 |
If I turn it off.
It sucks it in.
| | 03:45 |
You turn it on, pushes it out.
Pretty handy.
| | 03:49 |
And, the last couple of things here, is if
you did want to use a Custom Bend
| | 03:53 |
Allowance, or Custom Relief Type, we do
have these options to turn that feature on
| | 03:57 |
at the end, and actually change from a
K-Factor to maybe a Bend Allowance or Bend Deduction.
| | 04:02 |
If we're doing a bend outside of the
common 90 degree bend with our common bend radius.
| | 04:07 |
But in this case, we want to use the
default, so I'm going to turn that off.
| | 04:10 |
If you're happy with what you have, go
ahead and click on the green check mark,
| | 04:15 |
and there we go.
At this point in time, I'm going to switch
| | 04:18 |
over to the other part I have open by
going under Window, and it's called 2.4.2,
| | 04:23 |
or just go into File.
Open, and under your Exercise Files under
| | 04:28 |
Chapter Two, and choose 2.4.2, click on
Open.
| | 04:33 |
This is a flange that we started with
earlier, and I'm just going to show you a
| | 04:36 |
couple of other edge flanges we can add to
this.
| | 04:39 |
So just like we can add to this existing
flange, I can choose any of these other
| | 04:42 |
edges to add on to.
This case here I'm going to choose this edge.
| | 04:45 |
Click on Edge Flange you can bring up a
little bit you can see you got a nice
| | 04:50 |
little edge tradition here but one thing
we have as a problem is, what happens in
| | 04:55 |
this corner.
It starts intersecting with this other
| | 04:58 |
existing bend if I click on OK it does a
little relief and actually tears that
| | 05:04 |
material so, instead of doing that, that's
where I want to go back and I wanted to
| | 05:08 |
show if I go and I click on Trim Outside
Bends it should actually trim away that
| | 05:14 |
whole section that's interfering and you
get a nice corner there.
| | 05:17 |
So that's what the Trim Outside Bends
means.
| | 05:19 |
The Edge Flange tool is a real building
block of the SolidWorks tools.
| | 05:24 |
We first need to start with a part that's
created with either the Base or Flange tools.
| | 05:27 |
However, most of the remaining bins will
more than likely be created with the Edge
| | 05:31 |
Flange tool.
| | 05:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Edit Flange Profile tool| 00:00 |
The Edge-Flange2 is awesome, however, what
if we don't want a flange to go the whole
| | 00:04 |
length of the edge or we don't want just a
basic edge flange?
| | 00:08 |
How about adding a hole or two?
It's all possible using the Edit-Flange
| | 00:12 |
Profile tool.
There are a few rules that we need to
| | 00:15 |
follow to make the flange build correctly.
To get started, let's go ahead and choose
| | 00:19 |
this edge over here, and click on the
Edge-Flange2.
| | 00:26 |
We get the little pop-up displaying the
flange as we see it.
| | 00:30 |
If I spin it around, notice over here on
the left, right under the edge I chose, I
| | 00:35 |
have this Edit-Flange Profile button.
If I click on that, it puts me into a
| | 00:40 |
Sketch Mode and I have the ability to then
grab any of these sketch lines and move
| | 00:44 |
them around.
Notice the lines on the right and left are black.
| | 00:48 |
That doesn't mean you can't grab them, and
still move 'em around.
| | 00:50 |
So, I can adjust the length of that
flange, the height of that flange.
| | 00:54 |
And if I want to even zoom in on it, I can
even add onto it.
| | 00:58 |
So in this case here, we'll grab that line
command, and I'm going to draw a line.
| | 01:02 |
You continue on that flange a little
further.
| | 01:06 |
Hit Esc when you're done.
Now, in this case here, the one
| | 01:09 |
requirement is that I need to have one
enclosed boundary.
| | 01:12 |
So, along the bottom edge, up, over, and
down.
| | 01:15 |
I actually have two boundaries, oh,
because there's this line here connecting
| | 01:18 |
the two.
So, I need to get rid of that line.
| | 01:20 |
I'll go up to Trim Entities, choose the
Power Trim, and go ahead and trim that out.
| | 01:25 |
Notice, that as soon as I do that.
The yellow preview shows back up, and then
| | 01:30 |
if I want to be a good designer I click on
the center line command, connect the dots
| | 01:33 |
again, so everything stays in line, and
looking good.
| | 01:37 |
Now, I can also come here and add in
circles if I wanted to, if I want to add
| | 01:41 |
in some rectangular shapes, those are all
just fine.
| | 01:46 |
As long as I have one exterior boundary
and inclose interior boundaries.
| | 01:50 |
I can have as many as I want, it doesn't
really matter.
| | 01:53 |
The other thing to keep in mind though, is
when this turns into a flat pattern you
| | 01:55 |
want to make sure whatever shape you
create, when it's flattened out does not
| | 02:00 |
intersect with any of the other flanges
that you might be bending up to create
| | 02:04 |
that shape.
When you're done editing that flange
| | 02:06 |
profile, go ahead and click on Finish, and
it gets updated.
| | 02:10 |
Take a look in here.
We can see that we've got a, a brown bend relief.
| | 02:15 |
And our flange is right there at the edge
at that same level in line, okay?
| | 02:19 |
If I want to play with that a little bit,
I can always go back to that Edge-Flange,
| | 02:22 |
click on it.
Go up to Edit Feature and you can see
| | 02:26 |
what's going on here with that flange.
As far as the flange position, we can go
| | 02:31 |
ahead and change it to material outside,
or if I click on bend outside, it actually
| | 02:36 |
gets rid of the bend relief all together.
If I bring it back in, and it adds it back
| | 02:40 |
in here.
This is an (INAUDIBLE) round.
| | 02:42 |
Notice that is has a rounded corner at the
back.
| | 02:45 |
I can change that by going to Custom
Relief Type.
| | 02:49 |
Going down instead of aubrown, I'd like to
use rectangular.
| | 02:52 |
Notice I change it to a hard rectangular
cut at the back of that shape.
| | 02:57 |
When you're done, go ahead and click OK,
and there's our shape.
| | 03:01 |
The Edge-Flange2 is the basic building
block of all sheet metal parts.
| | 03:05 |
The Edit-Flange Profile option, allows us
to really harness the power of this tool
| | 03:08 |
and to create much more complicated
designs.
| | 03:11 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the miter flange| 00:00 |
There's no more impressive or powerful
tool in the Sheet Metal tools library than
| | 00:04 |
the Miter Flange.
The Miter Flange can create very
| | 00:07 |
complicated sheet metal shapes in a snap,
and correct the use of the feature can
| | 00:11 |
really save you a lot of time.
More than likely this tool will help you
| | 00:14 |
create shapes that would otherwise be
extremely difficult.
| | 00:18 |
To get started, we have to draw a sketch
on an edge.
| | 00:21 |
And that's the hardest part.
But before we do that, we need to actually
| | 00:24 |
start the sheet metal feature.
So I'm going to click on sketch.
| | 00:27 |
I'm going to choose the top plane.
I'm just going to draw a rectangle using
| | 00:30 |
the Corner Rectangle Cool.
Starting right on the origin, I'm going to
| | 00:33 |
draw our a rectangle.
And I'm going to go ahead and add a couple
| | 00:36 |
dimensions of 5.0 and 4.0.
And, come up to sheet metal and click on
| | 00:45 |
Base Flange tab, to create a base feature.
In this case here, I'm going to choose
| | 00:50 |
0.125 thickness, click OK.
Now, if I wanted to go back and change any
| | 00:56 |
of the sheet metal features, I can always
go back and right click on the sheet metal
| | 01:00 |
itself feature.
And that allowed me to change my bend
| | 01:02 |
radius, my thickness, my bend allowance,
and such.
| | 01:06 |
In this case here, I actually want to
change it to 0.125 as my bend radius as well.
| | 01:09 |
I'm going to click on okay.
And now, we're ready to get started.
| | 01:14 |
Now, the first thing we want to do, is we
want to keep track of where the origin is.
| | 01:17 |
So I click on the origin here, you can see
it highlights it, over here in my window,
| | 01:20 |
if I click right there, there's the
origin.
| | 01:22 |
So what I want to, is I want to draw on a
face that's adjacent to the origin.
| | 01:26 |
In this case, I'm going to choose this
flat face, the edge of the sheet metal.
| | 01:30 |
I'm going to go up to Sketch, start a
sketch, and we'll start with the line command.
| | 01:35 |
Now I always like to use the Normal Two
command by clicking on the space bar and
| | 01:39 |
then selecting Normal Two.
Now, I want to choose not this bottom edge
| | 01:44 |
here, but this top corner.
So it's the upper right hand corner of the
| | 01:48 |
part to draw on.
And start a line command right there.
| | 01:51 |
And let's just go up for a little bit.
About 2.65.
| | 01:56 |
Come over, about one and a half.
And down about a half of an inch.
| | 02:00 |
Okay, that's my shape.
And when I'm done with the shape go ahead
| | 02:03 |
and hit escape.
But I could continue on and create as wild
| | 02:07 |
or as complicated a shape as I'd like.
In this case here, that's all I really need.
| | 02:10 |
And let's go into the Sheet Metal tools,
and click on Miter Flange.
| | 02:15 |
As soon as I click on Miter Flange, you
can see that it propagates along that
| | 02:18 |
entire edge, using that geometry that I
created.
| | 02:21 |
Now I can always go back and add
dimensions and fully define that shape.
| | 02:25 |
Next, I want to go back and choose a few
more edges around that part.
| | 02:29 |
I don't want to choose an edge that
intersects with the origin though.
| | 02:31 |
So, go ahead and choose this one on the
far side, to continue the design, and
| | 02:36 |
notice what happens there.
It creates a Miter Flange on two adjacent
| | 02:41 |
bends, one after another and creates some
really complicated sheet metal geometry in
| | 02:45 |
that shape.
I can continue on by adding a few more of
| | 02:48 |
these lines.
And the Edge Flange, or Miter Flange,
| | 02:52 |
continues around the outside of that shape
to close it up.
| | 02:55 |
However, notice the origin's right here in
the middle of our part.
| | 02:58 |
So instead of choosing these edges, let's
go ahead and un-select those for right now.
| | 03:03 |
And go ahead and finish out that part by
clicking on the green check mark, and
| | 03:07 |
there it is.
Now, this is the perfect opportunity to
| | 03:10 |
use some symmetry like the Mirror command,
because number one is I have the origin in
| | 03:14 |
the middle of the part, and I'll probably
be adding in a closed corner or maybe a
| | 03:19 |
weld beat to this outside edge, and I
don't really want to do that work four
| | 03:22 |
times, I'd rather just do it once and use
the symmetry across the part.
| | 03:26 |
So, to do that, I'm going to go over to
Features.
| | 03:28 |
I'm going to choose the Mirror command.
And we can mirror a sheet metal parts,
| | 03:32 |
just like we'd mirror regular parts.
My mirror face or plane, I'm going to
| | 03:35 |
choose is this edge of the sheet metal.
And instead of using the basic features to
| | 03:40 |
mirror, I want to make sure I come down
here to Bodies to Mirror.
| | 03:42 |
And that's really important.
So choose Bodies to Mirror.
| | 03:44 |
And go ahead and choose that entire body.
Click OK.
| | 03:49 |
Go ahead and do that one more time.
Choose Mirror.
| | 03:53 |
The face or plane, I'm going to choose
this edge of the sheet metal, and not
| | 03:58 |
Features to Mirror, but Bodies to Mirror.
And go ahead and choose the entire body,
| | 04:02 |
click OK and there you have it.
So you have a really nice mirrored part,
| | 04:06 |
with a lot of complicated geometry that
was created really, with only a couple
| | 04:09 |
quick commands using the Miter Flange.
Of all the Sheet-Metal tools, the Miter
| | 04:14 |
Flange can really do so much with very
little input.
| | 04:17 |
Once you set up the initial sketch, the
tool does the rest.
| | 04:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a swept flange| 00:00 |
Swept flanges are fairly new to SolidWorks
and provide a handy tool for complex
| | 00:04 |
compound bends.
Be careful with this tool.
| | 00:07 |
Just because you can create it in a
computer does not mean you can create it
| | 00:10 |
in real life.
Many times, you'll need to buy expensive
| | 00:13 |
tooling and deal with manufacturing
issues.
| | 00:15 |
My best recommendation would be to do a
preliminary design and then start talking
| | 00:19 |
with a manufacturer about the feasibility
of that design.
| | 00:22 |
That being said let's make a Swept flange.
To get started with, let's go ahead and
| | 00:28 |
open 2.7, Start File.
And in this case here, what I want to do
| | 00:32 |
is I want to create a flange that's
going to start on this edge here and go
| | 00:35 |
around the outside of the perimeter of
this part and end over here.
| | 00:39 |
So, one of the primary things we need to
choose when we're starting with a swept
| | 00:42 |
flange is we need to choose and draw a
sketch on a coincident edge.
| | 00:47 |
so in this case here, because I want to
draw on this edge or actually want to
| | 00:50 |
extrude along that edge.
I want to start drawing on this face here.
| | 00:54 |
So I'm going to go ahead and choose a
sketch, start a sketch and start with a
| | 00:59 |
line command almost right there the top
and draw it up over and out.
| | 01:05 |
And we'll just leave it undefined for the
moment.
| | 01:08 |
I can move things around a little bit just
to get a little bit better shape.
| | 01:12 |
That's about what I'm looking for.
Now I'm going to go ahead and exit out.
| | 01:16 |
So, I've got a sketch on that edge there.
And we're going to be going and creating
| | 01:22 |
that swept flange down along this edge,
around that edge there and around the rest
| | 01:26 |
of the part.
To get started, go to the Sheet Metal tools.
| | 01:29 |
In the ribbon, if you don't see that tool
available here, you can always add it in.
| | 01:34 |
But we also have access to all the Sheet
Metal tools up here under Insert > Sheet
| | 01:39 |
Metal, in this case here, we're going to
come down to Swept Flange.
| | 01:43 |
Click on Swept Flange and this works a lot
like a regular sweep.
| | 01:47 |
Number one, I'm going to choose that
profile If I want to sweep around the
| | 01:52 |
outside of the part.
Notice it's pre-selected because I had
| | 01:54 |
selected it originally.
If not, go into the tree, expand it out
| | 01:58 |
and choose that sketch.
Next it's looking for edges.
| | 02:01 |
Now it can have a sketch that defines
those edges or I can just choose them from
| | 02:05 |
the window.
As soon as I do that, it gives me a nice
| | 02:08 |
preview what's going to happen, and I can
continue on that part.
| | 02:11 |
Check out this edge right now.
It's a hard edge, but as soon as I click
| | 02:14 |
on that next adjacent edge, it actually
bends in, sweeps it out, so it's pretty nice.
| | 02:19 |
And continue that all the way around, all
the way over to here and go ahead and end.
| | 02:23 |
Looks good.
You can use the basic default radiuses or
| | 02:26 |
you can change them.
You can change a couple of their offsets
| | 02:29 |
from the ends and then click on OK to
accept the flange.
| | 02:34 |
Now this part is very complicated to build
doing tradition bending techniques.
| | 02:39 |
So this would have to be a stamping or
hydra-form part to be actually manufactured.
| | 02:44 |
This one is not too bad though.
But you can really get some pretty
| | 02:47 |
complicated parts that'd be extremely
difficult to manufacture using this tool.
| | 02:50 |
So my recommendation is definitely check
in with your manufacturer to make sure
| | 02:54 |
whatever you come up with is
manufacturable and easy to work with.
| | 02:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Jog feature| 00:00 |
A Jog feature is an offset in sheet metal.
The most common use of this feature is to
| | 00:04 |
create an overlap of two parts or two
edges.
| | 00:08 |
In this case here, I've got a formed sheet
metal piece that have two edges that are
| | 00:11 |
kind of butting up against each other with
a gap.
| | 00:13 |
What I want to do is add an offset that
goes underneath this other flange, and
| | 00:17 |
then maybe extend this flange so, it
covers.
| | 00:19 |
To do so, what I need to do is start a
sketch on this top plane.
| | 00:22 |
Let's go ahead and click on Sketch, and
click on Line.
| | 00:27 |
And this is a regular line, not a center
line.
| | 00:28 |
Click on Spacebar, so, I'm looking
straight down on that face.
| | 00:32 |
And I'm going to make a line just across
that part.
| | 00:34 |
And it just happened to be snapping across
the origin, so, it defines where that's located.
| | 00:38 |
When you're happy with your sketch, go
ahead and hit Escape, and then jump over
| | 00:43 |
here into the Sheet Metal tab and come up
here to Jog.
| | 00:47 |
The first question is, which face is
going to be fixed?
| | 00:50 |
In this case here, it's going to be this
one.
| | 00:52 |
And as soon as I do that, I get a preview
of what's going to be created.
| | 00:55 |
You can see that's way too big and going
the wrong direction.
| | 00:58 |
So, we gotta fix this thing up a little
bit.
| | 01:00 |
Number one is my offset distance.
I really don't want is an offset that is
| | 01:04 |
just one material thickness.
So, I type in 0.063.
| | 01:09 |
You could see, it's looking better, but
now it's still the wrong side.
| | 01:12 |
So, let's go ahead and flip the direction.
So, it's on the inside.
| | 01:16 |
And actually when I am doing an offset, I
ran into a little bit an issue because
| | 01:20 |
what happens is, there's two bends that
actually create this offset.
| | 01:23 |
And they actually run into each other
right here in this plane.
| | 01:26 |
So, at 90 degrees, it's to big of a bend
to actually complete this offset.
| | 01:31 |
So, what I want to do is I want to start
changing that angle to a smaller angle,
| | 01:35 |
so, you can see that flange starts moving
up, up, up, up into the other flange.
| | 01:39 |
And right about 60 degrees is the sweet
spot.
| | 01:43 |
In fact, it goes a little bit past.
So, 61 degrees will just give us a little
| | 01:47 |
gap right between the two faces, so, you
have a nice flange with a nice overlap and
| | 01:51 |
nothing interferes.
And while we're at it, because the two
| | 01:54 |
faces are actually touching, these two
bends are touching, we can change this
| | 01:58 |
from 0.063 offset really to a 0.00 offset.
And that'll be just fine.
| | 02:03 |
When you're happy with it, go ahead and
click on OK.
| | 02:05 |
And you can see there's my flange, my
offset looks good.
| | 02:09 |
Now, what we need to do is extend this
face here so, it covers over the top of
| | 02:12 |
the offset.
To do so, I'm going to click on that top face.
| | 02:15 |
I'm going to start sketch and click on the
Spacebar, look down straight on that part,
| | 02:21 |
and come up here to the Corner Rectangle
tool.
| | 02:23 |
I'm going to click right on the edge, I'm
going to snap there, and I'm going to snap
| | 02:27 |
right here to the beginning of that bend.
I don't need any other dimensions there,
| | 02:30 |
because I'm snapping to two points.
And that looks pretty good.
| | 02:34 |
Come over to Sheet Metal, use the Base
FlangeTab tool, which is going to extend
| | 02:38 |
that face using a tab, click on OK.
All the defaults are preset, because we're
| | 02:43 |
extending an existing Sheet Metal feature.
Click on OK, and there we have it.
| | 02:48 |
We have a nice overlap between the two
parts.
| | 02:50 |
They're actually not touching, there's a
small gap between the two.
| | 02:53 |
This perfect for spot welding.
And if we wanted to, we could add some
| | 02:57 |
through holes.
If we wanted to put some bolts or screws
| | 02:59 |
through there or rivets.
We could use counter sunk screws if we
| | 03:02 |
need the two keep a nice flat surface.
And we can put PEM fasteners or something
| | 03:06 |
like that on the backside to connect the
two faces together.
| | 03:10 |
We're now going to jump over to 2.8.2,
which is a flat plate.
| | 03:14 |
And it's going to demonstrate one more
basic jog.
| | 03:17 |
If I click on the Jog feature from the
beginning, it asks me for a planer face to
| | 03:21 |
sketch bend on.
In this case here, I'm going to choose the
| | 03:25 |
top face, and it automatically puts me in
the Sketch mode.
| | 03:28 |
I'm going to choose the Regular Lline
command, hit the Spacebar.
| | 03:31 |
So, I'm looking down at that, and I'm
going to create a line from the inside of
| | 03:34 |
the part all the way to the other.
Then I'm going to come up here hitting
| | 03:38 |
Escape to get out of that command.
Grab the Dimension tool.
| | 03:42 |
Dimension from the line to the edge of the
part.
| | 03:44 |
And in this case, I'm going to say 1.0,
Enter.
| | 03:47 |
And that fully defines the line.
Notice, it's black, fully defined, no
| | 03:52 |
other issues.
And we're ready to create our jog.
| | 03:55 |
Go up here to Jog.
And my fix face is going to be that same
| | 04:00 |
flat face, and they can see that there's
my representation of the jog.
| | 04:05 |
It's going to be a little preview of it.
And I can change the size or height.
| | 04:09 |
And this time here, I'm going to make it a
one inch jog.
| | 04:13 |
Instead of 60 degrees, let's go ahead and
make it 90 degrees.
| | 04:16 |
And let's also look at the flange position
here.
| | 04:18 |
You can see that it extends all the way
out to the edge of the part.
| | 04:21 |
Notice that the part was this long and it
still is this long.
| | 04:24 |
What that does is it adds a material to
this jog to make sure it's the same length.
| | 04:29 |
That's controlled by this button here, Fix
Projection Length.
| | 04:31 |
If I turn that off, notice that it sucks
it way back, and it just takes up the
| | 04:35 |
existing material and makes the jog with
it.
| | 04:38 |
This is really handy though, because it
always will add the correct amount of
| | 04:40 |
material to continue that part to the end.
I can also play with the position of the jog.
| | 04:45 |
I can use the bend center line, I can use
the material inside, material outside, or
| | 04:52 |
bend outside.
Just to move that flange position around
| | 04:55 |
different places, depending on how I have
that line defined originally and where I
| | 04:59 |
want that Jog feature to actually end up.
When you're happy with all the features,
| | 05:03 |
I'm going to go back to the bend center
line one, spin it around, and go ahead and
| | 05:07 |
click on the green check mark to finish
the feature.
| | 05:10 |
The jog feature is really a combination of
two edge flanges, and some added features
| | 05:14 |
that control the length of the resulting
flange.
| | 05:16 |
Jogs are great for creating off sets or
strengthening edges.
| | 05:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making hems| 00:00 |
A hem is basically just bending over the
edge of sheet metal to get a smooth,
| | 00:04 |
finished edge, versus a rough or sharp
edge.
| | 00:07 |
Hems also help to improve the strength of
the sheet metal edge.
| | 00:10 |
There are several types of hems that
SolidWorks can create and if done
| | 00:13 |
correctly, features like piano hinges can
be built into your part.
| | 00:16 |
This does take some special tooling, so
make sure the shop you're working with has
| | 00:20 |
the tooling.
To get started, let's select an edge to hem.
| | 00:22 |
I'm going to pick this edge here.
And go up to the Sheet Metal tab and make
| | 00:27 |
sure I pick the Hem tool.
And you can see right off the bat, I get a
| | 00:32 |
preview of what's going to happen.
I want to use this closed hem here to
| | 00:36 |
start off with.
So let's go over the features.
| | 00:38 |
Number one is the edge that we chose.
I can choose an adjacent edge to add
| | 00:43 |
additional hems to the sides.
I can choose how I want that hem to be placed.
| | 00:48 |
Do I want the material on the inside or do
you want to add additional material to
| | 00:51 |
push it on the outside.
I'm going to choose the first option there.
| | 00:55 |
As far as the closed hem, I can have it so
it's actually smashed against the other at
| | 00:59 |
the joining face.
I can have it as an open hem by pushing it up.
| | 01:03 |
I can have it as a teardrop hem or I can
have it as a rolled hem.
| | 01:07 |
A bunch of different options I can play
with there.
| | 01:08 |
In the first case, I'm just going to
choose the basic closed hem and I'm
| | 01:12 |
going to adjust the length to being 0.375.
If I have miders in my part, I can adjust
| | 01:18 |
the gap between the two.
In this case here, I'm going to type in 0.03.
| | 01:22 |
When you're happy with how it looks, go
ahead and click OK.
| | 01:25 |
And all those edges get hemmed out.
If you want to edit the hem, we could
| | 01:29 |
always go back to that same feature over
here, click on the feature.
| | 01:31 |
Click on the fly out Edit Feature tab, and
I can come back to it.
| | 01:37 |
I can go back and adjust the hem, I can
adjust the gap, maybe I'll make an open
| | 01:42 |
hem over here.
And I don't really want all those edges,
| | 01:45 |
so I can go back and hit the Delete key to
remove some of these other faces So I'm
| | 01:50 |
only doing that to the one edge.
But you can always go back and edit things
| | 01:53 |
as needed.
Now on this side of the part, maybe I'd
| | 01:56 |
like to add like a piano hinge for
instance.
| | 01:58 |
So what I'll do is I'll click on the edge,
I'll click on Hem and in this case here I
| | 02:03 |
want a Rolled Hem.
And I can type in the degree and I can
| | 02:07 |
type in the radius.
So the radius would be whatever size pin
| | 02:10 |
you'd be using, we'd probably want half
that pin diameter for the radius.
| | 02:14 |
So let's say that we're going to use an
8th of an inch pin.
| | 02:16 |
So maybe I'll give it a 0.065.
So that'd be 0.03 which would be half the
| | 02:20 |
eighth inch plus a little bit more just so
we have the clearance in there.
| | 02:23 |
Let's zoom in and take a look what we have
there.
| | 02:25 |
So in this case here it'd be a little bit
too open, so I'm going to change that angle.
| | 02:29 |
So I can bring that all the way around and
form it so it's just about hitting that
| | 02:34 |
lower face.
So maybe 295 looks like a pretty good angle.
| | 02:39 |
When I'm happy with that, go ahead and
click on OK and there we have it.
| | 02:44 |
Now to make a true piano hinge, we'd
actually need to go back and slice this up
| | 02:48 |
and do some cuts to divide up that surface
across the part.
| | 02:51 |
But we can come back and do that later.
Hems are a nice way to finish the edge of
| | 02:55 |
a sheet metal part, it can create a more
professional and polished look on your design.
| | 02:58 |
Not only do they strengthen the edges,
they can also design in custom hinges or
| | 03:03 |
other connections into the edges of your
parts.
| | 03:06 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Sheet Metal Cuts and CornersUnfolding and folding parts| 00:00 |
Sometimes we can build parts in 3D.
However, other times it's easy to work
| | 00:04 |
with sheet metal parts in their flat
state.
| | 00:07 |
The Unfold command allows us to unfold one
or more bends, make whatever changes we
| | 00:11 |
need to, to the part, and then refold it.
To get started, we need to choose what
| | 00:15 |
face we would like to start with, on a
flat section.
| | 00:18 |
In this case here, I want to add a cut
across, this bend here, and I want it to
| | 00:24 |
continue from this face, over, across the
bend, and up and around here.
| | 00:28 |
To do so, let's go ahead and unfold this
bend here.
| | 00:31 |
Let's go ahead and choose Sheet Metal tab,
and come up to Unfold.
| | 00:36 |
The first question is, which face is
going to stay fixed?
| | 00:39 |
In this case here, I want this one to stay
fixed and this bend here, I want to choose
| | 00:44 |
that bend and go ahead and click on OK.
That just flattens out that one little
| | 00:49 |
section and I can spin it around and see
what I got.
| | 00:52 |
Now I can choose this face here, to start
sketch, click on Normal, too.
| | 00:55 |
Come up to Sketch, start a new sketch, and
I'm going to use the Slot command.
| | 01:00 |
I'm going to make it coincident with the
center of this radius.
| | 01:04 |
So I'm going to start there, drag it
across, I'm going to make it a half inch
| | 01:08 |
wide slot, 7.5 and I want to make it 1.25
long.
| | 01:19 |
Go ahead and go to Features and Extrude
Cut.
| | 01:21 |
And because we're working in sheet metal,
I have this option to choose length to
| | 01:25 |
thickness, click OK, and there it is.
Now I want to fold my part back up.
| | 01:32 |
So I go back to Sheet Metal, I want to go
to Fold.
| | 01:34 |
And I want to choose the fixed face, and
choose the band here.
| | 01:40 |
Click OK, and it's re-bent.
It's a real nice way to unfold, add some
| | 01:45 |
features, fold it back up, and you're
ready to go.
| | 01:47 |
We can also unfold the entire part by
going to the Flat-Pattern state.
| | 01:52 |
In this folder in the bottom of the
feature manager, I can expand out the
| | 01:55 |
Flat-Pattern and then I can right-click on
the flat pattern.
| | 01:58 |
And then I can right-click on the flat
pattern and say unsuppress.
| | 02:01 |
That'll flatten out all the bends and you
can see what our parts going to look like.
| | 02:04 |
When your done, go ahead and resurpress
it.
| | 02:06 |
It all comes back together.
And then to finish this part off, I just
| | 02:11 |
go ahead and use a couple of the mirror
features.
| | 02:14 |
(SOUND).
Choose a Facer Plane, I'll choose that one there.
| | 02:18 |
I'll choose a body to mirror, which is the
entire thing.
| | 02:21 |
I'll click OK, then I'll do it one more
time.
| | 02:25 |
(SOUND).
Mirror, bodies to mirror, (SOUND) that
| | 02:28 |
body, click OK.
And there's my complete part, and notice,
| | 02:32 |
I've only built one quarter of it, so it
really saves me some time by using a
| | 02:35 |
little bit of symmetry.
And when I go back to my flat pattern, I
| | 02:38 |
can always unsuppress, and see the
complete Flat-Pattern with all those bends
| | 02:44 |
flattened out.
When I'm done, go ahead, resuppress the
| | 02:47 |
part, and it's complete.
The Unfold and Fold commands are very
| | 02:51 |
helpful for working with parts in their
flat states.
| | 02:54 |
All the bends in a part can be unfolded,
or just the bends that you're working with.
| | 02:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making normal cuts in sheet metal| 00:00 |
There are 2 methods to make sheet metal
parts.
| | 00:02 |
Option 1 is to add in all the features, in
a flat pattern and then fold up the part.
| | 00:07 |
Option 2 would be to add secondary
operations to cut holes or cut across a part.
| | 00:12 |
Secondary operations add significant cost
and are generally not as desirable.
| | 00:16 |
If you want to make a cut into sheet metal
that will flatten correctly, you need to
| | 00:19 |
choose the normal cut option.
Let's take a look at some examples.
| | 00:23 |
In this part here, we've already got a
couple bends in this part and it's folded up.
| | 00:27 |
If I click on this top surface here, start
a sketch and come over here to the line
| | 00:32 |
command and click on space bar so I'm
looking normal to it.
| | 00:35 |
And we go ahead and draw a line from this
point here to this edge here and down
| | 00:42 |
across this edge and back out.
Then I'm going to go ahead and add a
| | 00:46 |
dimension from those 2 lines, of 30
degrees.
| | 00:50 |
Click OK.
And I've got a fully defined sketch.
| | 00:53 |
Now what I want to do is, I want to cut
that across my part here.
| | 00:57 |
So I'm going to go up to Features and go
to Extruded Cut, and I want to say Through All.
| | 01:02 |
And it cuts across the part.
Now if I leave normal cut off, what it
| | 01:06 |
does when I click on the feature, it cuts
across the part and it looks really nice,
| | 01:10 |
however in reality, in sheet metal if it
starts with a flat pattern we can't make a
| | 01:15 |
cut like this.
It actually causes errors for us, so if I
| | 01:18 |
click on the flat pattern I'll show you
what I'm talking about.
| | 01:20 |
Unsupress, and actually you see that it
actually tries to do this little angle cut
| | 01:24 |
here because it's not in a flat state so
you have to actually machine that in
| | 01:29 |
there, or you have to cut this later on.
On a saw.
| | 01:32 |
So if I suppress that I can come back go
back to the feature and click on normal cut.
| | 01:39 |
And that little option there will change
it, so that it actually dips in around
| | 01:43 |
those corners and actually deforms that
material around the corner.
| | 01:46 |
Now from the side it looks exactly the
same.
| | 01:49 |
But, as I look at it at an angle, I can
see that both of the corners, kind of flex
| | 01:54 |
around where the bend region is.
Normal cuts are really what will happen
| | 01:57 |
automatically, when you cut a part in its
flat state, and then form it up.
| | 02:01 |
At the end of the day, normal cuts are the
way to go, because, there's no extra
| | 02:05 |
tooling, and the parts will be clean and
easy to form.
| | 02:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding cuts across bends| 00:00 |
There are many options for making extrude
cuts and holes in sheet metal.
| | 00:03 |
If you're little bit creative and with a
few choice cuts and bends, very intricate
| | 00:07 |
geometry can be created.
Let's take a look at an example.
| | 00:10 |
In this case here, I want to have a tab
that sticks out the side of this part and
| | 00:14 |
it can be nested inside of this flange
right here.
| | 00:17 |
To do so, I'm going to choose a cut from
the bottom of the part.
| | 00:21 |
I'm going to choose that flat face, click
on the Spacebar, click on Normal To, and
| | 00:25 |
I'm going to come up with a cut.
I'm going to start right on that bend line
| | 00:29 |
and I'm going to drag out a cut all the
way to the edge.
| | 00:32 |
Now the width of my rectangle is
predefined because I snapped at the edges
| | 00:36 |
of the line and the end of the part but I
want to add a couple dimensions.
| | 00:39 |
In this case here, to the end of the part.
I'll type in 1.0 and I'll do the same
| | 00:44 |
thing at the top.
From there to there, 1.0 and let's go
| | 00:48 |
ahead and do a Features > Extruded Cut.
What that's going to do is it's going to
| | 00:52 |
cut through that part.
Now we have a couple of requirements here
| | 00:55 |
because we're using a sheet metal part.
And we want to make sure that we always
| | 00:57 |
cut fully across the entire bend.
So I can choose something like a Up to
| | 01:03 |
Next, Up to Vertex.
Up to Vertex will take it right to that
| | 01:06 |
point here.
Or I can use the Blind cut.
| | 01:08 |
As long as I'm using something past the
end of the part.
| | 01:12 |
So I'm going to go ahead and choose 1.25.
So I'm going to cut past the part.
| | 01:17 |
Click on OK.
And now I've got a nice relieved cut.
| | 01:21 |
Now, I'm going to choose again that bottom
face, click on Normal To > Start a sketch,
| | 01:29 |
use a Rectangle tool.
And I'm going to draw out what that tab
| | 01:32 |
should look like.
In fact I can even add in something like a
| | 01:35 |
center line from the origin and put a
hole.
| | 01:42 |
Include all that together and I can add a
few dimensions.
| | 01:45 |
In this case here, we'll type in 0.5, and
we'll make that tab 0.5 from the edge of
| | 01:53 |
the part.
And I can define the length of this here.
| | 01:56 |
I'll just make it 1.25.
(INAUDIBLE) putting that little whole
| | 02:00 |
right on the edge of that part.
And then I want to define also the edge
| | 02:04 |
distance between that edge relief and the
edge of the tab.
| | 02:09 |
So go ahead and click there and type in
0.10.
| | 02:13 |
We're using fairly thick material here so
we want to at least make it a fairly thick
| | 02:18 |
space between the two to give enough
relief.
| | 02:21 |
Click on 0.1, you can see a preview of
what we're going to see.
| | 02:25 |
And then go ahead and choose Sheet Metal
and choose Base Flange tab, I'm just
| | 02:29 |
going to create a tab.
Click OK, there you go.
| | 02:32 |
Now you might think, hey this is great,
but what happens if this flange gets a
| | 02:37 |
little bit longer?
So you definitely have to keep track of
| | 02:39 |
where that flange is, and where it's
coming out of.
| | 02:42 |
So let's take a look at what happens.
Let's go to Flat Pattern > Un-suppress,
| | 02:46 |
take a look.
Well, we just happened to luck out here
| | 02:50 |
because we have a nice amount of material
all the way around that tab that's not interfering.
| | 02:57 |
So when I fold it back up, we're good to
go.
| | 02:59 |
But what happens if we went back to that
tab and i got a little bit more aggressive
| | 03:04 |
with the length.
And I said, well I want this to be 1.75
| | 03:07 |
which looks completely fine.
And when I create the feature, it looks
| | 03:12 |
just fine as well.
But when I go over here to the flat
| | 03:14 |
pattern, and I unsupress, guess what
happens.
| | 03:17 |
It interferes.
Obviously, we can't have materials
| | 03:20 |
overlapping each other in a flat pattern.
So we have an error.
| | 03:23 |
However SolidWorks dose not necessarily
tell us about errors like this.
| | 03:26 |
So we have to make sure that whenever
we're working with tabs or flat patterns
| | 03:30 |
or cutting across a bend and adding tabs.
That we take a look at the flat pattern
| | 03:34 |
and make sure that we don't have any type
of interferrence like this in the future.
| | 03:37 |
So let's go back, change that tab, change
it back to the 1.25.
| | 03:43 |
Which we know works, exit out and we're
back to a good part.
| | 03:49 |
There are many ways to work with sheet
metal and your imagination is the limiting factor.
| | 03:53 |
Get creative with sheet metal bends, cuts
and tabs.
| | 03:55 |
But keep in mind that everything must
flatten out when you're done.
| | 03:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making closed corners| 00:00 |
When forming Sheet Metal, the corners
between flanges will normally have a gap
| | 00:04 |
that can be undesirable.
Solid works has tools for closing the gap,
| | 00:07 |
and offers several options on how to build
that corner.
| | 00:10 |
To get started, let's look at the problem.
When I add in a flange, using the edge
| | 00:14 |
flange tool, to this edge here, you can
see, I can place it up here, and I can
| | 00:19 |
control it's length by going up to vertex
and make it the same length as these other flanges.
| | 00:23 |
So then I click OK.
You can see I end up with this big gap
| | 00:27 |
between the flanges.
It's obviously a lot more apparent when
| | 00:30 |
I'm using a little bit thicker material,
but either way, it's undesirable.
| | 00:34 |
I can also see down here in this region
here, I've got a little bit of an overlap
| | 00:38 |
between the two flanges, and this region
here's probably going to be pulling and
| | 00:41 |
causing issues.
So first things first, let's go back to
| | 00:44 |
that edge flange, edit the flange, and
what I can do is, I can open up that
| | 00:49 |
corner region by clicking on Trim Side
Bends.
| | 00:52 |
Click OK.
You can see it trims away that material,
| | 00:55 |
and you have a nice clean corner now, but
the problem is we still have a nice, big gap.
| | 00:59 |
Actually, not a nice gap at all, but it's
what we want to get rid of with the closed corner.
| | 01:03 |
Let's go ahead and try that out.
Go up to Corners, go to close corner.
| | 01:07 |
And let's choose from the faces to extend.
So I want to choose either this face here,
| | 01:12 |
or that face there.
So pick one of those.
| | 01:15 |
And you can see what happens, and we get a
little preview.
| | 01:17 |
So this would be a corner to corner, or a
butt type flange.
| | 01:20 |
You can do an overlap in this direction.
Or an overlap in the other direction.
| | 01:24 |
So I'm going to choose this overlap in
this direction.
| | 01:26 |
And watch what happens in that corner.
As soon as I click on OK.
| | 01:29 |
It's going to fill in this bend region
right here.
| | 01:31 |
Click OK, and there it is.
It extended this flange over, brought this
| | 01:36 |
one in, and brought that whole bend region
in so you got a nice tight corner.
| | 01:40 |
Makes it look a lot nicer, than this open
bend region on this side here.
| | 01:43 |
I've a few more options on this side.
I'll go ahead and use a corner, close
| | 01:47 |
corner again, and this time I'll do that
bite corner, or corner to corner type treatment.
| | 01:52 |
And this is great for using, like, a weld
bead up this corner.
| | 01:55 |
And choose one of these, and click OK.
You can see, that's a perfect place for
| | 02:01 |
placing a nice weld bead.
Also, when you're in this, state like this
| | 02:05 |
and you have a close corner up together,
the first step in bringing a flange over
| | 02:09 |
for instance, if I was going to be using
something like a, welded or riveted corner.
| | 02:14 |
This point in time I could choose this
interior edge, using edge flange, bring it
| | 02:21 |
over, notice that's interfering so let's
go change with the position of that
| | 02:25 |
flange, and I want it to be completely on
the inside.
| | 02:28 |
Adjust its length, maybe 0.75, and click
OK.
| | 02:31 |
And you can see there we have again, a
nice flange but we do have that region at
| | 02:38 |
the bottom that's causing us trouble, so
go back to that flange.
| | 02:41 |
You might want to say, I prefer to have a
trimmed outside bend.
| | 02:45 |
You can open up that bend ridge here.
But a lot of times, when you do have
| | 02:49 |
multiple bends all coming into the same
area.
| | 02:52 |
You might want to leave that one open
here.
| | 02:53 |
Because, otherwise, especially with thick
material.
| | 02:55 |
You'll have a lot of pulling in different
directions that could cause issues.
| | 02:59 |
But this way, what I can do is, I can add
either spot welds, rivets, or drill some
| | 03:03 |
holes there, and add some fasteners.
Close corners make your part look finished
| | 03:08 |
and give you may options on the look of
your part.
| | 03:10 |
There also the first step in adding in
connected corners like weld beads, riveted
| | 03:14 |
corners or spot welds.
| | 03:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding welded corners| 00:00 |
The welded corner feature in SolidWorks
provides a visual representation of a
| | 00:04 |
weld, and allows you to get a
semi-accurate weight measurement.
| | 00:07 |
This also carries over to drawings, and
the welds can be shown.
| | 00:10 |
To get started, let's take a look at a few
examples.
| | 00:12 |
In this corner here, I've got a closed
corner, corner to corner, butt corner, and
| | 00:17 |
I have the open bend region here.
You can try closing up the bend region, if
| | 00:20 |
you want, but with for thicker materials a
lot of the times you'll make the weld
| | 00:24 |
feature fail.
Or have errors.
| | 00:25 |
So in this case, it's open and I'm
going to go up to the Sheet Metal, come
| | 00:30 |
over here to Corners, and use the welded
corner.
| | 00:32 |
I'm going to choose this face here and as
soon as I click on that, you can see it
| | 00:36 |
fills that in with a representation of
what's going to happen when I click on the
| | 00:40 |
welded corner.
Generally when you are doing welded
| | 00:43 |
corners, you want to have your 2 edges
very close together like this so you have
| | 00:47 |
a butt corner, or even a little bit of an
overlap, here.
| | 00:50 |
When the weld cools, it doesn't warp your
part.
| | 00:53 |
Go ahead and click okay.
And you can see a nice weld gets filled in there.
| | 00:57 |
And I can also do the same thing over
here.
| | 00:59 |
This has got an open bend region, so this
is probably not recommended.
| | 01:02 |
But SolidWork can definitely handle it if
you do get put in that position.
| | 01:04 |
But before we do this, I want to point out
that SolidWorks actually adds that weld,
| | 01:09 |
and also adds that material to the weight
of the part.
| | 01:12 |
So click on evaluate real quick, look at
mass properties and you can see this is
| | 01:16 |
3.26 pounds and 11.5 cubic inches.
Let's go add the weld come back and weight again.
| | 01:22 |
Go to sheet metal, go to corners, go to
welded corner and come over here and
| | 01:28 |
select this face.
You can see that it is going to fill in
| | 01:30 |
all of that material and I have a few
other options down here, I can change the
| | 01:33 |
fill out radius if I wanted to.
Either up or down.
| | 01:36 |
You can see that's going to move slightly.
You type in 0.125 to get a little bit
| | 01:40 |
sharper corner.
And I can add some texture, I can add weld
| | 01:43 |
symbols if I want to.
But in this case I don't really need them.
| | 01:46 |
And when I'm happy with that I go ahead
click on OK.
| | 01:48 |
And there it is.
Let's go back and evaluate that again.
| | 01:52 |
Weight it and you can see, we add a little
bit of mass and we added a little bit of volume.
| | 01:59 |
Okay.
When you're happy with that you see the
| | 02:01 |
two welded corners.
Comes out pretty nice.
| | 02:03 |
And you've got a finished part.
Welded corners can be very helpful in the
| | 02:07 |
right situations.
And allows the designer to add in some
| | 02:09 |
polish to the design.
However, they also add in a lot of
| | 02:12 |
features and overhead to the part or
assembly, and should be used only when necessary.
| | 02:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a cross break| 00:00 |
In heating, ventilating and air
conditioning work, or duct work, cross
| | 00:03 |
breaks are useful to stiffen sheet metal.
The cross break command lets you insert a
| | 00:07 |
graphical representation of a cross break
in a sheet metal part.
| | 00:11 |
The cross break is not a geometric entity
and it does not alter the geometry of the part.
| | 00:15 |
You add it to provide the information
needed to create the cross break, during manufacturing.
| | 00:19 |
To get started, it's pretty easy, let's go
ahead and choose the cross-break command,
| | 00:23 |
and choose this top face.
You can see it gives us a nice
| | 00:27 |
representation on what's going to happen
here, and these lines here will be the
| | 00:30 |
bend lines as this thing gets formed up...
You can pull up.
| | 00:33 |
Or down, depending on which way you'd like
to have the cross break form.
| | 00:36 |
And you can adjust the bend radius.
You can change the angle.
| | 00:41 |
And you can edit the profile if you'd
like.
| | 00:43 |
When you're happy with what you have, go
ahead and click on okay.
| | 00:46 |
And you've got a nice part, showing a nice
representation of where the cross break
| | 00:50 |
will be when your part gets finally
finished during manufacturing.
| | 00:53 |
I'll just add a little extra polish on our
part here.
| | 00:55 |
Let's go ahead and change the material.
So let's go over to materials, right
| | 00:59 |
click, click on edit material, come down
here to galvanized steel.
| | 01:04 |
A lot of HVAC work is galvanized steel.
Go ahead and apply that.
| | 01:08 |
And click on close.
There's our finished part, galvanized
| | 01:12 |
steel with a cross breaks, looking nice.
Cross-breaks can be added into sheet metal
| | 01:16 |
parts as a representation of a
manufacturing option.
| | 01:19 |
If you're working with large panels and
need to support the flat section of the
| | 01:22 |
panel, this is a good option.
| | 01:24 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Converting to Sheet MetalUsing the Convert to Sheet Metal command| 00:00 |
Many times designs evolve from what might
have started as a solid body, might
| | 00:04 |
actually be made from Sheet metal.
Other times the geometry of a Sheet metal
| | 00:07 |
part is too complex, and designing it as a
solid is much easier.
| | 00:11 |
Either way you go, SolidWorks to Convert
to Sheet Metal command can easily convert
| | 00:15 |
any or most geometry to a flattenable
Sheet metal part.
| | 00:19 |
All we need to know is the Sheet metal
thickness and the band radius.
| | 00:21 |
To get started, let's fire up the command
and then choose the face that will be stationary.
| | 00:26 |
So, under the Sheet Metal tab, let's go
ahead and click on Convert to Sheet Metal.
| | 00:29 |
And I'm going to choose the bottom face as
my starting fixed face.
| | 00:34 |
There it is.
I'm going to type in my thickness of
| | 00:37 |
material, which is .063 and my bend rates
about 30 looks pretty good.
| | 00:42 |
Now, when I chose my bend edges I always
want to chose edges that happened to be
| | 00:46 |
around the fixed face.
So, in this case here, I'm going to chose
| | 00:49 |
this edge and you can see that as soon as
I do that it highlights that entire face.
| | 00:54 |
Come over here and pick the edge right
next to it, and again it chooses that
| | 00:57 |
whole face.
And it shows me that edge right here is
| | 00:59 |
going to be a ripped edge and notice that
it shows up down here.
| | 01:03 |
Next, click this edge here, and then this
one inside here.
| | 01:10 |
Now, I can continue on here by clicking
this edge here on the inside, and this one
| | 01:14 |
out here on the outside.
You can see that ripped edge just follows
| | 01:17 |
up all the way along.
Soon as all that looks good, we come down
| | 01:22 |
here and let's take a look at some of the
other edge corner details.
| | 01:27 |
So, as far as the corner, there is an open
bed corner and I can define how big of a
| | 01:31 |
gap I like between the two flanges.
I am going to type in 0.01 for 10
| | 01:36 |
thousands, and this is a overlap, it's 50%
right now, I am going to say it's 100% overlap.
| | 01:41 |
So, 1.0 would be a full overlap.
And come down here to K-factor.
| | 01:45 |
Now, K-factor will work just fine, but it
won't give us the exact flat pattern that
| | 01:49 |
we need when we actually go to build this
part.
| | 01:51 |
So, I prefer to change this over to a bend
reduction.
| | 01:54 |
But you see this edge here is actually not
a 90 degree bend, so I need to go look
| | 01:58 |
this up in a table and may do a custom
bend allowance for that one edge.
| | 02:02 |
So, at this point in time, let's just
leave that K-factor and we'll come back
| | 02:05 |
and adjust that later.
When everything looks good, go up to the top.
| | 02:09 |
Click on the green check mark and click on
OK and there's our part.
| | 02:13 |
It's a nice Sheet metal part now.
You've got a little bend release in the corners.
| | 02:17 |
You got a little gap between the flanges.
And we might want to do a little extra
| | 02:21 |
work at this point time to do some close
corners or some welded corners.
| | 02:25 |
Something that's going to finish this part
off.
| | 02:27 |
because right now there's nothing that's
really connecting these pieces together so
| | 02:30 |
maybe you want to bend over a little edge
flange, do some spot welding, something
| | 02:35 |
like that to make this a more robust part.
But at least we got a start and it's Sheet metal.
| | 02:39 |
Now, when I actually want to go build this
part or send it out, I can click on the
| | 02:44 |
Sheet Metal tab here.
I can always go back and edit this by
| | 02:48 |
right clicking that edit feature, and this
is where I can go change some of these
| | 02:51 |
values if I wanted to change from K-factor
to Bend Deduction.
| | 02:55 |
I can do that there.
And when I'm ready to make a flat pattern
| | 02:59 |
to this I can come down to the Flat
Pattern toolbar here, and I can right
| | 03:02 |
click on that and say unsuppress.
And I have a nice flat part now.
| | 03:06 |
And inside of that Flat Pattern folder, if
I expand it out I see that I've got a
| | 03:12 |
sketch for the bend lines.
I've got a down box telling me how big it
| | 03:15 |
is, and I've got all the different bends
here that have been flattened out.
| | 03:19 |
And I can get some data from this if I
like.
| | 03:20 |
I can go up here to Evaluate, click on
Measure, you maybe measure from one side
| | 03:26 |
to the other side to get the size of that
flat pattern.
| | 03:30 |
When you're happy with that, click OK, and
I can suppress that flat pattern, go back
| | 03:37 |
to a solid Sheet metal shape, and we're
good to go.
| | 03:40 |
Now, I'm going to switch over to another
part, which is 4.1.2.
| | 03:45 |
This is a little bracket.
So, this a really common part that you
| | 03:48 |
might see being converted to Sheet metal.
It was designed originally as either an
| | 03:52 |
extrusion, or maybe a plastic part or a
machined part.
| | 03:56 |
Something of that nature.
And when it actually went to the
| | 03:58 |
manufacturing floor, they said hey this
looks like a lot better part that can be
| | 04:01 |
made out of Sheet metal, so let's go ahead
and covert that over.
| | 04:05 |
So, to do so, same process.
We're going to go up to Sheet metal.
| | 04:07 |
We're going to go to Convert to Sheet
metal.
| | 04:10 |
And my fixed face I'm going to choose as
this one here.
| | 04:12 |
And my thickness this time I'm going to
type in .125.
| | 04:15 |
So, an eighth of an inch, and the 030
looked just fine.
| | 04:18 |
Coming down to bend the edges here,
going to choose this edge on the inside.
| | 04:22 |
And choose this entire face.
And come over here, pick out one more edge
| | 04:28 |
and you can see there's a nice
representation of what's going to happen
| | 04:31 |
when I build this Sheet metal part.
You have nice rounded corners because the
| | 04:34 |
Sheet metal will be forming around that
shape.
| | 04:37 |
And when everything looks good just go
ahead and click on the green check mark.
| | 04:41 |
There's our part.
Quickly coverts over to Sheet metal.
| | 04:43 |
And I can open the flat pattern,
unsuppress it and you can see I've got a
| | 04:47 |
nice flattened part.
You see the cut and ready to manufacture.
| | 04:52 |
No, matter where you are in a design, the
Convert to Sheet Metal command allows you
| | 04:55 |
to quickly move into the Sheet metal
world.
| | 04:57 |
Keep in mind, if you know from the start
you'll be making a Sheet metal part, it's
| | 05:01 |
always best to start with the Sheet metal
tools versus converting.
| | 05:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding sketched bends| 00:00 |
Sketch bends are a nice way to add bends
and flanges to existing parts.
| | 00:04 |
This can be very handy when a design is
already in process and a flat pattern has
| | 00:08 |
already been created.
It's also very helpful for working with
| | 00:11 |
imported parts.
To get started, let's go ahead and choose
| | 00:14 |
the top face of this part here.
And we'll jump over to the Sketch tab,
| | 00:17 |
select the Line.
Click on the space bar to bring up the
| | 00:20 |
Orientation Panel and click on Normal To.
I'mma draw a line from this side over to
| | 00:26 |
that side of my part.
Hit Escape to close outta that command.
| | 00:30 |
Grab the Smart Dimension tool, dimension
from that line to the end of the part and
| | 00:35 |
type in 0.75.
When you're happy with that, go over to
| | 00:39 |
the Sheet Metal command, and click on
Sketched Band.
| | 00:44 |
The first question of Sketched Band is
which face is going to be fixed, so I'm
| | 00:48 |
going to choose this top face here.
You can see, as soon as I do so, I get a
| | 00:52 |
little arrow, showing me which way the
bend is going to be bending, and I
| | 00:55 |
actually want to go the other direction,
so I click on these little arrows here to
| | 00:57 |
flip the direction.
I do want 90 degrees, I also have choice
| | 01:01 |
to select, if I want a center line bend, a
material inside, outside, or bend outside,
| | 01:07 |
condition of where I want that.
In this case here right there at the bend
| | 01:10 |
center line is fine with me.
I could adjust the bend allowance if I
| | 01:14 |
need it to, but in this case I'm happy
with what we have.
| | 01:16 |
So click on the green check mark, and
there's our first bend.
| | 01:20 |
Now I'm going to choose another bend and
place it right here.
| | 01:23 |
So I'm going to again choose the top
space, start a sketch.
| | 01:26 |
Click on the space bar.
Normal To, go ahead and grab a Line command.
| | 01:33 |
In this case here, I'm going to snap right
here to the end of this radius.
| | 01:36 |
And you can go all the way to the other
part, or even past it.
| | 01:39 |
Or you can have a short line.
It doesn't really matter how far the line is.
| | 01:42 |
I prefer to have it go all the way here,
but in this case I'm just going to show
| | 01:45 |
that you can have a short line.
As long as we have something that's
| | 01:48 |
telling the computer where we want to
place that bend.
| | 01:51 |
Jump back into the Sheet Metal command,
click on Sketch Bend.
| | 01:54 |
As far as my fix face, I choose this top
face again, and my position's fine.
| | 02:00 |
I do want to bend this one up.
So, click on the green check mark, and
| | 02:04 |
there we have our two bends from a flat.
And this is a regular sheet-metal part
| | 02:10 |
now, so I can click on the Flat Pattern
tool.
| | 02:12 |
Right-click on it and say Unsuppress, and
I can get the flat pattern, with bend
| | 02:17 |
lines, and a bounty box, so it's ready for
manufacturing.
| | 02:21 |
When working with sheet metal parts, flat
patterns are a way of life.
| | 02:24 |
Using the Sketched Bend tool, we could
build parts as flat patterns and then add
| | 02:28 |
bends as needed.
| | 02:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing geometry| 00:00 |
SolidWorks can work with many types of
files, and imported geometry.
| | 00:03 |
Sheet metal parts import just like any
other dumb solid.
| | 00:07 |
Dumb solid, you say?
What is that?
| | 00:08 |
The one characteristic of an imported
geometry is there's no feature tree.
| | 00:11 |
All the geometry is there.
However, you cannot directly change the features.
| | 00:16 |
However, you can add or cut through the
shape.
| | 00:18 |
Once we have the solid imported, we can
then use the Convert to Sheet Metal
| | 00:21 |
command to start working with the part.
Let's try it out.
| | 00:25 |
Let's go up to file, Open and in this case
here I have an IGS file which is 4.3 IGS
| | 00:30 |
that I'd like to open.
I also want to point out while I'm here
| | 00:33 |
that you can click on the File menu and
choose all the types of files.
| | 00:37 |
And you can see everything we have we can
import or work with.
| | 00:41 |
Our standard Solidworks files.
And we can import Dump Solids, or
| | 00:44 |
Universal Interchange formats like IGES,
or Step files.
| | 00:48 |
So I'm going to go ahead and choose the
IGES file, 4.3.iges, click OK, and it's
| | 00:54 |
going to import the solid.
And as far as running the import
| | 00:58 |
diagnostics, I do not want to do so, so
click on No, and I don't want to run
| | 01:02 |
feature error recognition either, but we
will do that in a second.
| | 01:05 |
Once I have that file that's imported I'm
going to switch over from Shaded to Shaded
| | 01:09 |
with Edges so I can see a little bit
easier and there's my part.
| | 01:14 |
Now you'll notice on the left here that I
have an imported solid.
| | 01:16 |
I don't have a feature tree at all.
There's nothing I can go back and edit or modify.
| | 01:20 |
So what I want to do is I want to show you
that I can add a feature.
| | 01:24 |
So I choose a face.
I can start a sketch.
| | 01:26 |
Maybe we draw a circle.
Start at the origin and do an extruded cut.
| | 01:33 |
And I'll do it up to next, so I'll cut
that through.
| | 01:36 |
So you can see that I can add or modify
features to it imported solid.
| | 01:41 |
So you have an imported solid now I have a
cut directly below that.
| | 01:44 |
But I can't go back and change the
original flanges or holes.
| | 01:47 |
So under sheet metal, I have a tool called
Convert to Sheet Metal which I can go
| | 01:52 |
ahead and activate.
And my fixed face is my first question I'm
| | 01:57 |
looking for here.
I'm going to choose the bottom of the part.
| | 02:00 |
And because I'm importing a sheet metal
part from the beginning, I can go down and
| | 02:04 |
use this tool called Collect All Bends.
So what that does is it analyzes the part
| | 02:08 |
and looks for any bends it can find.
Notice it finds all the bends.
| | 02:12 |
And it overrides any of the values you
might have up here as far as thickness and
| | 02:16 |
bend radius.
And it uses the values of the imported
| | 02:19 |
part that we're sending.
Now if everything looks okay, go to the top.
| | 02:24 |
Click on the green check mark.
And we've just converted this part over
| | 02:28 |
from a solid, then we import it to a full
sheet metal part.
| | 02:32 |
I can click on the plus next to here, I
can right click, I can say unsuppress, and
| | 02:37 |
I can flatten the part out so you can see
that I have flatten part, I have expanded
| | 02:42 |
this thing out here, I can look at the
bend lines, the bounding box, and I can
| | 02:45 |
see the different bends that I have in the
part.
| | 02:48 |
I'm happy with that, fold it back up, and
we are complete with that part.
| | 02:55 |
Now let's go back up to the Open command.
And this time I'm going to open the Step file.
| | 03:01 |
Click on Open, and again that's going to
run through and import the file, and it's
| | 03:06 |
going to ask us run import diagnostics.
In this case I want to click on Yes.
| | 03:10 |
Notice it finds a faulty face.
We have this tool called Attempt To Heal All.
| | 03:14 |
If I click on that SolidWorks will go
through and try to fix that face.
| | 03:18 |
It did a good job, fixed the face, and so
we are good to go here.
| | 03:23 |
Click on OK.
And now it's asking me if I'd like to run
| | 03:26 |
feature recognition.
Now SolidWorks has a feature recognition
| | 03:29 |
feature built into it that allows us to go
through and analyze the part and look for
| | 03:33 |
any faces.
Bends, holes, things of that nature.
| | 03:37 |
Click on Yes, and we have some options.
So number one, we have an Automatic mode
| | 03:42 |
we can be in or Interactive.
I'm going to choose the Automatic, and I'm
| | 03:46 |
looking for sheet metal features in here,
I'm looking for Extrudes, Holes, Base
| | 03:51 |
flanges, Sketch bends, Hems and Edge
Flanges.
| | 03:54 |
And my fixed face at the bottom, you need
to go and choose, is the bottom of the part.
| | 03:59 |
There it is.
And click on OK, and that's going to go
| | 04:06 |
through and analyze the part, and recreate
this as a complete sheet metal part.
| | 04:11 |
Okay, when we're done, switch over to
Shade With Edges, and we'll have a
| | 04:15 |
complete part here's all the features, I
can go back and edit any one of these
| | 04:19 |
features if I need to, changing the holes,
the sizes, the flanges, you name it, I can
| | 04:23 |
change it.
I can go down the bottom, to the flat
| | 04:26 |
pattern, I can unsuppress the flat
pattern.
| | 04:28 |
And take a look a the part, looks good,
and I could say that out for cutting.
| | 04:33 |
From this point on, I can now save this
part out, so I can go to File, Save As.
| | 04:38 |
I could save it out as a Standard
SolidWorks file type, or and IGES file, or
| | 04:42 |
Step file, or any other file format that
I'd like.
| | 04:45 |
In this case here, I'm happy with the
SolidWorks format, so, I'll leave it as is.
| | 04:50 |
SolidWorks has many options for importing
parts from other CAD systems, as well as
| | 04:55 |
universal file interchange formats, like
Step or IGES files.
| | 04:58 |
We can open a file, work with it, save as
a native SolidWorks file.
| | 05:02 |
Or save it as another universal file type
like a step or ex file.
| | 05:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at the rip feature| 00:00 |
The Rip feature can be used to split edges
or faces of sheet metal parts.
| | 00:04 |
Or in the process of converting to sheet
metal.
| | 00:06 |
We first need to create a sketch on a flat
face, or choose edges on an existing part.
| | 00:11 |
To get started, let's go ahead and open up
4.4 and you can see here I've got a part
| | 00:16 |
and I want to start a sketch on this top
face.
| | 00:19 |
So go ahead and choose a sketch and click
on Space bar for Normal To.
| | 00:22 |
Looking straight down on that face and
let's go over here and grab the Line command.
| | 00:26 |
And I just want to draw some lines across
these corners.
| | 00:32 |
I'm just going to snap to the inside
corner and snap to that outside edge.
| | 00:38 |
There we go.
Once I've got all four of those lines
| | 00:42 |
drawn in there, I'm going to go ahead and
exit out of the sketch.
| | 00:44 |
And see that's that's exactly where we're
going to be cutting our part, and we're
| | 00:49 |
going to cut it here, and then down this
edge here.
| | 00:51 |
So let's go ahead and fire up the Rip
command and we're going to choose some edges.
| | 00:56 |
The first edge I'm going to choose is this
one up here and notice when I do that, I
| | 01:00 |
get these two arrows going both
directions.
| | 01:02 |
So it's going to add a gap of ten
thousandths.
| | 01:05 |
In this case here, it'd be going in both
directions, so five thousandth one way,
| | 01:09 |
five thousandth the other way.
However, I don't want it to go both ways.
| | 01:12 |
I only want it to go along this long edge
here.
| | 01:14 |
So I'm going to change the direction so it
only goes this direction.
| | 01:17 |
Then I'm going to add the line directly
below that, or that inside edge.
| | 01:21 |
And change the direction so it's going the
same direction as the arrow above it.
| | 01:26 |
We want to do that for all the edges.
So I'm going to spin this around.
| | 01:31 |
Choose this edge on the top.
Choose the edge below it.
| | 01:35 |
Spin it around a little more.
Come over here, choose this edge here,
| | 01:41 |
change the direction.
Choose the edge on the inside, change the
| | 01:47 |
direction and just those last two edges
now.
| | 01:50 |
That edge and that one.
Okay, double check that all your arrows
| | 01:56 |
are facing towards the inside or along the
long edge of the part.
| | 02:00 |
That's essential to make sure the part
does this correctly and doesn't fail and
| | 02:04 |
when your done, go ahead and click on OK.
And you can see it cut along the edge here
| | 02:10 |
and along the inside edge of that part.
So now we still have a solid, we don't
| | 02:15 |
have a sheet metal part quite yet.
But we do have the edges sectioned off
| | 02:19 |
into the pieces that we would like.
Now I can use the Insert Bends tool,
| | 02:22 |
choose a flat face, should be the bottom
of the part and define a radius 060 is fine.
| | 02:29 |
I can go ahead and change the bend
allowance or bend deduction, I can use the
| | 02:34 |
K factor to whatever I like.
K factor will work just fine for this
| | 02:38 |
example, though.
And when I'm happy with all that, I can go
| | 02:41 |
ahead and click on the green check mark.
I also want to point out before we do
| | 02:44 |
that, though, that the rip parameters down
here.
| | 02:47 |
I could actually add in those rip edges
during this tool at the same point in time
| | 02:52 |
if I wanted to.
Click OK.
| | 02:54 |
(SOUND).
It's going to let us know that it needed
| | 02:57 |
to add a few auto reliefs and that's
great.
| | 02:59 |
Click OK.
And you can see that, here's the auto
| | 03:02 |
reliefs it needed to add.
And we've got a sheet metal part.
| | 03:05 |
If you spin this thing around, we can see
the corners.
| | 03:08 |
We've got some open corners on the bottom
here.
| | 03:10 |
And we can continue on adding maybe some
close corners to finish this part off.
| | 03:14 |
But we have a nice sheet metal part.
And we've got both the Rip command and the
| | 03:18 |
Insert Bends tool.
Ripped edges are essential when converting
| | 03:21 |
to sheet metal.
Or modifying how a sheet metal part is created.
| | 03:24 |
The Rip command is also built into the
convert to sheet metal feature in the
| | 03:27 |
Insert Bends tool.
| | 03:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a lofted bend| 00:00 |
The lofted bend command allows us to
create complex shapes using simple 2D sketches.
| | 00:05 |
The requirement is the shapes have open
profiles, and we do separate sketches.
| | 00:09 |
In this case here I've got a sketch 1,
which is drawn on the top plane and I have
| | 00:14 |
a plane that I put directly above that,
which I drew sketch 2 on.
| | 00:19 |
If you don't remember how to create planes
you would start with something like a top plane.
| | 00:24 |
Go up to features.
Go to reference geometry and select plane,
| | 00:28 |
and then type in the distance you'd like
to move that plane up above the existing
| | 00:32 |
plane you chose.
Click OK, but in this case here I've
| | 00:35 |
already got a plane so I'm going to cancel
that, then on sketch number two I'll take
| | 00:40 |
a look at what's in that sketch.
And it's basically just a rectangle or a
| | 00:44 |
square with rounded corners.
One of the requirements is that we have
| | 00:48 |
rounded corners when we're transitioning
from a round part to another round part,
| | 00:51 |
the hard corner is what causes issues.
So we've got to have some type of radius
| | 00:54 |
in the corners there.
And it has to be an open profile.
| | 00:57 |
So I've taken a close profile And added a
little of construction geometry over here
| | 01:02 |
and cut away a little gap between the 2
faces.
| | 01:07 |
On the bottom sketch , the same thing.
Let's open that up.
| | 01:11 |
Click on that sketch and you can see that
I've got about a half of a degree that I
| | 01:15 |
added here with some construction
geometry.
| | 01:17 |
And just a little gap in that circle so
it's not one continuous circle, it's a
| | 01:21 |
Open circle, and then I'm ready to go and
create that feature.
| | 01:25 |
So let's go over to sheet metal.
Let's go to lofted bend, and as far as my
| | 01:30 |
profiles, let's start here at the bottom,
and go up here to the top.
| | 01:35 |
You can see that gives us a little preview
of what's going to happen.
| | 01:37 |
You can see where the bend lines are
going to be.
| | 01:40 |
You can see where the cut's going to be
between the two parts.
| | 01:42 |
So, you can flatten that out.
We can adjust thickness.
| | 01:45 |
We can adjust some other things, as far as
a profile goes first or second using these
| | 01:49 |
up and down arrows.
And we're ready to go.
| | 01:52 |
I do want to point out this message right
here.
| | 01:54 |
It's saying that if you want to have bend
lines show in the flat pattern, we have to
| | 01:58 |
make sure we have the same amount of
corresponding lines and curves.
| | 02:01 |
In this case that's really not going to
happen because we got a circle going to a
| | 02:04 |
square with multiple bends, multiple
lines.
| | 02:07 |
So we'll probably not see the bend lines
but that's okay.
| | 02:09 |
Click okay, and there's our shape.
I can go to the Flat Pattern unsurpress
| | 02:16 |
the flat.
And there's our shape.
| | 02:20 |
Has a flat, ready to cut.
Get out of that feature, and that part's done.
| | 02:25 |
Let's jump over now to 4.5.2.
And this is again is a couple of open
| | 02:32 |
profiles that we want to loft between the
two.
| | 02:34 |
So this is going to be like a little scoop
or a little tray for some parts, or like
| | 02:38 |
an ice tray that would be sliding down
into a machine or something.
| | 02:41 |
So in this case here, I've got a sketch,
let's take a look at it real quick.
| | 02:46 |
Just some basic lines and I've added some
radius's to the corners.
| | 02:50 |
So you've got a nice full radius and
(INAUDIBLE) mirror over the center line so
| | 02:54 |
both sides are the same.
And the same thing on this side over here.
| | 02:58 |
Build the plane, push it out a few inches
and created that shape.
| | 03:03 |
Okay.
Let's go into lofted bend.
| | 03:06 |
Let's choose our profiles.
So I can choose it either from the window
| | 03:09 |
here, (SOUND).
And take a look.
| | 03:13 |
You can see a little preview of what's
going to happen here.
| | 03:15 |
You can see the corners.
It's going to put material on the outside.
| | 03:19 |
I can always switch that to put all the
material on the inside, if I wanted But in
| | 03:23 |
this case I like it on the outside better
and if everything looks good in the
| | 03:26 |
preview, let's go ahead and click on the
green check mark to accept that part and
| | 03:31 |
there's our complete part.
I can expand out the flat pattern, right
| | 03:36 |
click on it and say express and there's
our flat ready to cut The lofted bend
| | 03:42 |
command works in much the same way as the
regular loft command.
| | 03:45 |
The main difference is in the end result,
which will be a sheet metal part that we
| | 03:48 |
can then flatten out.
| | 03:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Multibody PartsBuilding a chassis| 00:00 |
In this movie, we're going to go through
the basic steps required to build a sheet
| | 00:03 |
metal chassis with several parts all
created in the same parts file.
| | 00:06 |
We will then save out the individual parts
and look at the assembly.
| | 00:10 |
So what we have here is a server chassis.
A one use server chassis which fits into a
| | 00:15 |
19 inch rack.
And it's the beginning of the parts.
| | 00:18 |
So we still have a lot of work to do on
this, to add holes and mounting,
| | 00:21 |
connection points between the different
panels.
| | 00:23 |
But the key point here is that we've used
and created all these parts in just one
| | 00:27 |
part file.
So I want to point out the different files here.
| | 00:31 |
I can open the cut list.
I can look at the base which is just a
| | 00:34 |
panel on the bottom.
I use a linear pattern to create the top.
| | 00:38 |
I use a Base Flange in the back.
We create a part on the side of this.
| | 00:42 |
And then we mirror it over to the other
side.
| | 00:44 |
And then finally we create the front
panel.
| | 00:46 |
So what we're going to do, is we're
going to go through the individual
| | 00:48 |
features required to create this shape.
Let's go up to the Base Flange, and create
| | 00:53 |
it from the beginning.
I'm going to open that up, click on the
| | 00:56 |
sketch, open the sketch, and just look at
the dimensions.
| | 00:59 |
Basically, a center point rectangle with a
couple dimensions, pretty basic.
| | 01:04 |
Then I use a linear pattern to make one
more.
| | 01:07 |
I can take a look at that linear pattern,
and you can see that I have a space in the
| | 01:11 |
1.75 and there's two instances of the
part.
| | 01:14 |
If I went back and changed this value here
from 1.75 to a bigger number, the entire
| | 01:18 |
chassis would actually update.
So, let's take a look at that.
| | 01:21 |
I'm going to type in 3.75.
Click OK.
| | 01:25 |
And then, scroll the history bar down to
the bottom.
| | 01:28 |
You can see the entire chassis
automatically updates, because all of the
| | 01:32 |
parts are built in context to each other.
So, everything updates when I make one
| | 01:37 |
small change.
It's not really what I wanted to do,
| | 01:39 |
though, so let's go back and change that.
Go back to the feature, type in 1.75.
| | 01:45 |
And click OK.
I want to roll that history bar back up to
| | 01:49 |
where we were.
And come down to this next feature.
| | 01:53 |
So the Base Flange in the back was created
on the top face of this bottom piece.
| | 01:57 |
So, what I did was start a sketch.
And if I hit the space bar, I can look at
| | 02:04 |
normal to it.
And it's a pretty basic sketch.
| | 02:06 |
It just goes along that back edge of the
chassis.
| | 02:08 |
And I've got a spacing of 063 for the
thickness of the material and the length.
| | 02:13 |
When I'm happy with that sketch, I just
create this sheet metal feature.
| | 02:16 |
A sheet metal feature happens to be tucked
right inside where the other features are,
| | 02:21 |
so if you look at the feature itself.
You can see that it's being created inside
| | 02:25 |
that edge.
And this is where that Reverse Direction
| | 02:28 |
button really comes in handy.
If I would created, originally, it was on
| | 02:31 |
the outside, I can change that so it's on
the inside, and I've got a little gap for
| | 02:35 |
where my other panel comes in the side.
Click OK when you're done, and this moves
| | 02:39 |
down a little bit further.
In this case here, we've got a Base
| | 02:43 |
Flange, which we're creating on the side
of the part.
| | 02:45 |
Now, I'm going to go ahead and hide the
top of this.
| | 02:47 |
So hide, so you can see what's happening
here, and there's my panel that I'm
| | 02:52 |
putting on the side.
And I'm going to create a little tab,
| | 02:56 |
which is basically just expanding out
this, so it's the full width of the front
| | 03:00 |
panel of the chassis.
I'm just come down to the Edge Flange, so
| | 03:04 |
basically, create an edge flange on the
bottom, which we could then add in some
| | 03:08 |
spot welds later, or maybe some fasteners.
Put some pins on the inside of here, and
| | 03:12 |
maybe some counter-sunk screws in the
bottom.
| | 03:14 |
A lot of different options there.
And when I'm done with that, I mirror up
| | 03:17 |
to the top of the part, so I'm using some
symmetry.
| | 03:19 |
And then I take the entire piece, and I
mirror it to the other side of the chassis
| | 03:23 |
by using another mirror command.
And then work on the front panel.
| | 03:28 |
This is quite easy to bake because there's
not even one dimension in there.
| | 03:31 |
I am just snapping to the corners of the
existing geometry.
| | 03:36 |
Snapping up here.
Snapping down here with the corner rectangle.
| | 03:39 |
And making sure that when I extrude this
out or turn it into a Sheet Metal Flange.
| | 03:44 |
That we're going away from the existing
flanges and make sure that we're not
| | 03:47 |
merging the results together.
And there's our front panel.
| | 03:50 |
And that's it.
So now, we have flat patterns for all
| | 03:53 |
those features.
I can go into any one of these flat
| | 03:55 |
patterns, Unsuppress it.
You can see exactly what's going to be cut.
| | 04:00 |
And when I'm done looking at the flat
pattern, I can go back to the folded state
| | 04:04 |
and all the other parts will come back.
And I can go ahead and show the cover again.
| | 04:11 |
At this point in time, I'm able to
actually continue on, and making more
| | 04:14 |
complex cuts or more parts that need
assembly, or I can go and save these parts
| | 04:18 |
out in an assembly.
Now, I can right-click on any one of these
| | 04:21 |
parts here, and I can say Insert into New
Part, or I can click on the top cut list,
| | 04:26 |
and I can say, Insert into New Part or
Save Bodies.
| | 04:30 |
Now, Save Bodies will actually bring up
this dialogue window here.
| | 04:33 |
It allows me to go and select all these
bodies, and save 'em out to individual files.
| | 04:38 |
To do so, just go ahead and click on the
check box.
| | 04:41 |
Adjust the name.
Click Save.
| | 04:43 |
And do the same thing all the way down the
list.
| | 04:45 |
(SOUND).
I can just save out these parts.
| | 04:48 |
I'm just accepting the existing names, but
I could change those as we go.
| | 04:55 |
Once you have all the names in there,
let's go ahead and, I can choose to copy
| | 05:00 |
some custom properties over there, and I
can actually build a new assembly just by
| | 05:03 |
clicking on Browse, choose a chassis, or a
name, I already had one there, so I'm just
| | 05:08 |
going to override it.
Click on Save.
| | 05:11 |
Replace that chassis and it's going to
rebuild this entire part as an assembly now.
| | 05:15 |
As individual bodies that all assemble
together.
| | 05:17 |
When you're happy with that go ahead and
click on Save.
| | 05:21 |
Give it a second to save out all the
files.
| | 05:23 |
And we should have a new assembly.
It can rebuild.
| | 05:26 |
Save the document.
And I can jump over here now to my new assembly.
| | 05:30 |
You can see that all those individual
parts we created originally are now
| | 05:34 |
individual parts.
They're all fixed in space in this
| | 05:37 |
assembly called chassis.
If I wanted to move anything around,
| | 05:40 |
notice that there is a little F in front
of each of the names which means fixed.
| | 05:44 |
If you right-click on any one of those, I
can come down to float, and that allows
| | 05:48 |
that part to be moved around and assembled
just like any other assembly.
| | 05:52 |
Their are many good ways to design, and in
this movie we reviewed one method for
| | 05:55 |
designing a rack mount server case.
In creating multi body parts, it becomes
| | 05:58 |
very easy to relate parts together and
come up with a very robust design.
| | 06:02 |
There's no right or wrong methods, but
hopefully this illustrates some of the
| | 06:05 |
techniques used with multi body parts.
| | 06:08 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the pattern tools| 00:00 |
A raise of parts or features can be
| | 00:02 |
used in the apart or assembly mode of
SolidWorks.
| | 00:04 |
In this example, we'll cover using the
Pattern tools on the part level.
| | 00:08 |
The Pattern tool needs two basic pieces of
information.
| | 00:12 |
Number one is what to pattern, and number
| | 00:13 |
two, what direction do we want to pattern
in.
| | 00:15 |
This can be any edge in the direction that
we need to place the parts in.
| | 00:18 |
We saw some examples of this in the
chassis
| | 00:20 |
walkthrough, and now we're going to add
onto that design.
| | 00:23 |
First we're going to cut a hole on the
front panel, and
| | 00:25 |
then build a cover.
We'll then pattern that cover.
| | 00:28 |
To get started, let's take a look at that
front face.
| | 00:31 |
You can see here, that cut already placed
on the front cover there, and what we
| | 00:35 |
want to do is take that cut, and we
want to pattern it along that front panel.
| | 00:39 |
So let's go over to the linear pattern
under the Features tab, inside
| | 00:43 |
of there I want to choose the direction I
want to pattern in.
| | 00:46 |
So I'm going to choose this linear edge at
the top.
| | 00:49 |
Soon as I do that, I get a little example
| | 00:51 |
of what's going to happen, and obviously
they're too close together.
| | 00:55 |
So I'm going to type in 4.0 as my spacing
| | 00:57 |
between the parts, and four of them looks
good, because
| | 01:00 |
they're patterned across the entire face,
and when you are
| | 01:03 |
happy with that, we can go ahead and
select Okay.
| | 01:06 |
You notice I am using the Features to
pattern, so I am
| | 01:09 |
patterning that feature alone, not the
bodies or faces, and click Okay.
| | 01:14 |
Now, we have added those cuts.
| | 01:16 |
Now, what I would like to do is actually
build a lit cover.
| | 01:18 |
It's going to go over one of these and we
will pattern the covers well.
| | 01:21 |
So, let's pick the front face.
| | 01:23 |
Start a sketch.
| | 01:24 |
I'm going to click on the space bar, and
click on normal two.
| | 01:26 |
Then you come down here.
| | 01:28 |
Now, what I want to start with is a little
center line from the top of that cut-out
| | 01:32 |
down to the bottom, and then when I go
| | 01:35 |
in, and I'm going to use the center point
rectangle.
| | 01:37 |
I'll snap right to the midpoint of that.
Makes it easy to
| | 01:41 |
go in, and add a couple dimensions.
| | 01:42 |
This case here 4.0 and this line over
here, 1.0.
| | 01:47 |
And that way it's always centered no
matter if that
| | 01:49 |
cutout moves anywhere in the design, I'm
linked right to it.
| | 01:54 |
Okay.
| | 01:54 |
Let's go to sheet metal, let's go to based
flange tab,
| | 01:57 |
and this case we're going to be making a
little flange.
| | 02:00 |
Let's go ahead and choose reverse
direction because you
| | 02:03 |
can see it's actually interfering with the
front panel.
| | 02:05 |
I'm just going to
| | 02:06 |
push on the outside and then turn merge
result off because I
| | 02:08 |
really want this to be a separate piece,
and click on OK.
| | 02:13 |
Then I can add on to this, maybe an edge
flange on the bottom.
| | 02:17 |
Bring it out a little bit.
| | 02:18 |
Give it a length 0.5.
Looks good.
| | 02:21 |
Click OK and continue adding on to that
body.
| | 02:24 |
It can cut the holes.
| | 02:25 |
I can add some fill-its, whatever I need
to do.
| | 02:28 |
Now that I have independent body, I can
now pattern that body across
| | 02:31 |
the front panel.
| | 02:33 |
To do so, let's go back to Features, let's
go up to Linear pattern.
| | 02:37 |
Let's choose direction one and come down
here, 4 inches is good.
| | 02:42 |
But instead of features to pattern this
time,
| | 02:44 |
I want to come down to bodies to pattern.
| | 02:46 |
I want to take that entire cover, and
pattern it along the part.
| | 02:49 |
Now, I can choose it here from the view
window, or I can go
| | 02:52 |
up here, expand out the tree, and come
down and choose, from the cut list,
| | 02:57 |
that last feature.
| | 02:58 |
You can see that I already had four inches
in there.
| | 03:00 |
So that's going to give it a nice spacing
between the parts.
| | 03:04 |
They all happen to be touching then.
Click on okay.
| | 03:06 |
And I'm going to pattern that part all the
way down there,
| | 03:09 |
so you have close parts touching all the
way down the part.
| | 03:13 |
And that's exactly what we're looking for.
| | 03:15 |
Patterns can really save a lot of time and
can quickly be changed.
| | 03:18 |
Use patterns for features, parts, or
assemblies.
| | 03:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using mirror symmetry| 00:00 |
In this movie, we'll look at the Mirror
command that we saw using the chassis walk-through.
| | 00:04 |
We need two things to use this command.
Number one, a mere plane.
| | 00:07 |
Hopefully, we have one in our model.
If not, we can go ahead and create one.
| | 00:11 |
And number two, a feature or body to
pattern.
| | 00:13 |
In this case here, I want to look at this
side of the chassis.
| | 00:17 |
I have an edge flange on the bottom of
that, and I'd like to mirror that up to
| | 00:20 |
the top edge of this.
To do so, I need some type of a mirror
| | 00:24 |
plane in the middle of this feature here.
However, there's not one there.
| | 00:28 |
So, what we need to do is go ahead and
create one.
| | 00:30 |
To do so, I'm going to go up to Reference
Geometry, I'm going to choose Plane, and
| | 00:35 |
I'm going to choose my first reference as
the top of that little flange.
| | 00:40 |
And my second reference as the bottom of
that flange.
| | 00:43 |
Notice what happens there, it makes a new
plane right between those two faces.
| | 00:46 |
That's exactly what I want, click on OK.
And there it is.
| | 00:52 |
Next, let's go ahead and choose the mirror
command.
| | 00:54 |
In this case here, I want to pres-elect
that new plane that I just created.
| | 00:59 |
And then, instead of bodies to mirror, I
want to go up to features to mirror here.
| | 01:02 |
And the feature I'm looking to mirror is
this lower flange here.
| | 01:06 |
Now, I could choose it from here, but I
always like to choose from the tree instead.
| | 01:10 |
So, go down to edge flange one, select
that, and you can see a preview of what's
| | 01:14 |
going to happen.
That's going to mirror that up to the top edge.
| | 01:17 |
And that looks good.
Click OK, and there we have it.
| | 01:23 |
Next, let's take that entire piece and
mirror it over here to this side of the part.
| | 01:28 |
Go up to Mirror, select a face or plane.
I want to choose this right plane.
| | 01:33 |
And instead of features to mirror, in this
case, I want to go down to bodies to mirror.
| | 01:37 |
I want the entire body on that side of the
part.
| | 01:40 |
So, go ahead and choose either from here.
Or I can come up here to the cut list,
| | 01:45 |
choose that last item and mirror it over.
You get a nice example of what's going to happen.
| | 01:49 |
And click OK to move the part over.
This is an example of using both the
| | 01:55 |
Feature Mirror as well as the Body Mirror,
and some of the requirements we need to
| | 01:59 |
have to use either one of them.
| | 02:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the split feature| 00:00 |
The Split feature can be handy for
separating a part into many pieces using a
| | 00:04 |
cut service.
This tool can be used both for solid and
| | 00:07 |
sheet metal parts.
Sometimes it's easier to design one part
| | 00:10 |
and then split that part into many pieces
using the split feature as one of the
| | 00:14 |
final features in the part.
To use the Split tool we need to create a
| | 00:17 |
surface first.
If you're not familiar with the Surfacing
| | 00:19 |
tools that's okay, they're not too hard to
use.
| | 00:21 |
But we do need to make sure we add in the
Surfacing Tool Palette.
| | 00:24 |
First, let's go up to anyone of the
available tabs, right click on it and make
| | 00:29 |
sure we turn on the Surfaces ribbon bar.
As soon as it shows up we can go into
| | 00:34 |
Surfaces and we want to create an extrude
surface.
| | 00:37 |
However, before we do an extruded surface,
we have to create a sketch to extrude.
| | 00:41 |
So let's go back over here.
You can see that I have a sketch laid out
| | 00:44 |
on top of this part over here.
Let's go ahead and edit that sketch.
| | 00:48 |
And take a look at what we have.
So I've got a few different lines here,
| | 00:52 |
they're connecting.
The one requirement is that all the lines
| | 00:54 |
extend past the end of the part or snap to
one of the edges.
| | 00:59 |
But we can't have any lines that would
stop, like, inside of here.
| | 01:01 |
They must all extend past the end of the
part.
| | 01:04 |
Once we're happy with our sketch, exit out
and we're ready to create that surface.
| | 01:08 |
So we go up to Extruded Surface.
Come down here, I'll choose that sketch
| | 01:13 |
and we can go up a little bit above the
part.
| | 01:16 |
It's definitely fine to extend up past the
part or below the part.
| | 01:20 |
But we want to make sure that either way
we're cutting it completely through the
| | 01:23 |
part in both directions.
That looks to me.
| | 01:26 |
Go ahead and click OK and there's our
surface to cut.
| | 01:30 |
Next, we're going to go in and use the
Split command.
| | 01:32 |
However if you look under the features
tab, you might not see Split listed as one
| | 01:37 |
of the tools.
So we need to go into Insert > Features,
| | 01:39 |
come down here to Split.
When you choose Split, it's asking what's
| | 01:43 |
the trim tool, what are we going to use to
trim out these individual parts?
| | 01:48 |
And that's that surface we just created.
So, go ahead and choose the individual
| | 01:52 |
faces, this one, that one, that one, that
one and that one.
| | 01:57 |
And those will be all our tools to slice
this part.
| | 02:00 |
When you're happy with what you have, you
can then say Cut Part.
| | 02:03 |
And you can see that it creates all these
individual bodies.
| | 02:06 |
And then any of the bodies you like, you
can use the check mark here to select them.
| | 02:14 |
We can auto assign names or we can click
on that part there.
| | 02:17 |
Double click on it and save out a body.
Let's go ahead and put them in the Split folder.
| | 02:22 |
You can save out the bodies, and click on
each one of those.
| | 02:25 |
I'm just going to use the default names.
And when you're done with that, we can add
| | 02:29 |
a few other options as far as copying over
the customer properties to those bodies.
| | 02:33 |
And then click on OK.
SolidWorks is going to go ahead and split
| | 02:37 |
up that part.
Save out the individual bodies and there
| | 02:40 |
we have it.
So now we have all these are in bodies.
| | 02:44 |
And we have the Split command is there,
and if we go over to our file system, we
| | 02:47 |
can go and take a look.
There's all the individual bodies.
| | 02:50 |
Let's go back over to SolidWorks.
And I can now modify this, change it, I
| | 02:54 |
can always go back and re-split the bodies
and save them out again.
| | 02:58 |
The Split feature is a nice way to design
more complicated designs as one part and
| | 03:02 |
then use a simple surface to slice that
part into individual pieces.
| | 03:06 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting individual parts| 00:00 |
Making multi bodies is a quick and
efficient way to design.
| | 00:03 |
The only problem is, is that all the parts
are together in one part file.
| | 00:06 |
It makes it difficult to make individual
drawings or to create an assembly of the
| | 00:10 |
individual parts.
No problem, though.
| | 00:12 |
The last time we looked at this part, we
made a split body and separated this into
| | 00:15 |
individual pieces.
However, they're all still in the same part.
| | 00:18 |
If you open that feature up, the split
body.
| | 00:21 |
We can take a look inside there and you
can see that we can save out individual
| | 00:25 |
files by just clicking on anyone one of
them here, and adding a file name.
| | 00:30 |
If you didn't do this in this process,
that's okay, we can always go back and add
| | 00:33 |
that later.
Click on OK.
| | 00:35 |
And we come up to cut list up here, if you
expand that out, you can see here's all
| | 00:39 |
the individual pieces.
Now, the first thing that we can do is
| | 00:42 |
right click on it and say Insert into New
Part.
| | 00:44 |
As soon as I do that it's going to ask me
to save the part.
| | 00:48 |
In this case here, I'm going to say 5.5.1.
Click on Save.
| | 00:51 |
Click on Yes.
And we saved all those.
| | 00:58 |
Now, what we have is an individual part
saved out.
| | 01:00 |
It's referencing the original part that it
was created in, so any changes to the
| | 01:03 |
original part will update this part.
But then I can continue in the design by
| | 01:07 |
adding holes or features to this part
moving forward.
| | 01:11 |
If instead of creating this part, I'm
going to close that.
| | 01:14 |
If I want to save out all the parts, I can
right click on the top of that folder and
| | 01:19 |
say Save Bodies.
It's going to ask me to select all the
| | 01:23 |
individual bodies I'd like to use.
And I'll go ahead and check each one of those.
| | 01:26 |
Now, by default, it automatically adds a
name to each one of those.
| | 01:30 |
If want to double-click on each one, I can
choose where I'd like to save it.
| | 01:33 |
In this case here, I'm going to put it in
the Split folder, and click on Save.
| | 01:38 |
Do the same thing for each one of those.
Okay.
| | 01:42 |
Now they're all going to go into the Split
folder, and we have individual parts that
| | 01:44 |
are all going to be saved out.
They come down to the bottom of the screen.
| | 01:47 |
I can see, I can create an assembly of all
these individual parts.
| | 01:50 |
If I click on Browse.
Add that same folder.
| | 01:53 |
I can call it Split.
And you click Save.
| | 01:57 |
Now, I'm going to save on assembly as well
as the individual parts.
| | 02:01 |
And go ahead and click on OK.
And SolidWorks is going to go ahead and
| | 02:06 |
save out all those individual parts plus
build an assembly of those individual
| | 02:09 |
parts that we can open up.
(SOUND) Go ahead and rebuild.
| | 02:15 |
Here's our original part.
And behind the scenes here, you can see,
| | 02:17 |
there's my assembly.
This is made up of all those individual
| | 02:20 |
parts, and I can open up any one of those
and take a look at it.
| | 02:24 |
I can make changes to this part and
they'll stay only with this part.
| | 02:27 |
But if I go back and I change the original
part that created all these, these will
| | 02:30 |
automatically update.
Go ahead and close that and I'm going to
| | 02:33 |
switch over and look at the folder
structure.
| | 02:35 |
So, you can see that I have that 5.1 part
right here and I also have that split
| | 02:40 |
folder with the assembly at the top and
all the individual files saved down below.
| | 02:44 |
By building a series of parts together in
one file makes it easy to build an
| | 02:49 |
assembly without needing many individual
parts or assembly documents.
| | 02:52 |
However, when you want to document and
make drawings of the parts it's best to
| | 02:55 |
save out individual files that we can
open, save, modify and make drawings of.
| | 03:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Forming ToolsUsing forming tools| 00:00 |
Forming tools, allow us to add in custom
form shapes into Sheet Metal.
| | 00:04 |
We can add in ribs, louvers, card guides,
embosses, debosses, and the list keeps going.
| | 00:09 |
Generally, forming tools are custom.
However, they are quite a few standard
| | 00:12 |
shapes that most manufacturers might have.
The best advice that I can give is check
| | 00:16 |
with your supplier as to what type of
tooling they have.
| | 00:19 |
Many shops will provide a list for your
reference.
| | 00:22 |
In SolidWorks, we have some pre-installed
shapes and we can use those, modify them
| | 00:26 |
or even create our own.
Let's check it out.
| | 00:28 |
I'd like to place a emboss down here on
this lower piece of Sheet Metal.
| | 00:33 |
And to go grab that tool, I need to go
into the design library.
| | 00:36 |
I'll open up the design library.
And if you're not familiar with the design
| | 00:39 |
library, it has a lot of features that we
can drag and drop into our parts.
| | 00:43 |
We have annotations, assemblies, features,
and forming tools.
| | 00:46 |
If you'd like to keep this out, you can
click on the little push pin here and it
| | 00:49 |
keeps it out.
So we have embosses, extruded flanges,
| | 00:54 |
lances, louvers, and ribs.
But in this case here, I want to use an
| | 00:58 |
emboss and I'll use the circular emboss.
It's pretty easy to use, we just drag and drop.
| | 01:02 |
So we can drag it out here, if we drag it
over to this face here, it'll place it
| | 01:05 |
there, or we can place it down here.
Soon as you let go of that mouse, it
| | 01:09 |
places it on the face.
I can flip the tool over if I'd like, or
| | 01:12 |
flip it back.
And I can rotate if I needed to, but it's
| | 01:16 |
a circle, so it's not going to do much
there, and I can modify a couple of other
| | 01:19 |
features down here at the bottom of the
tool, but most of the defaults are just fine.
| | 01:22 |
If I go over to the Positions tab, I can
then click on the Space bar, click Normal
| | 01:27 |
2, and add a few dimensions here, to
locate that part.
| | 01:32 |
I'll say 2.5, and I'll say 3.5.
That's located, in space.
| | 01:39 |
Now, if I'd like to add more, I can just
go back to the Point command.
| | 01:43 |
Anywhere I click, it's going to add one
more of those features.
| | 01:46 |
If you don't want one, click on it, hit
delete, takes it out.
| | 01:49 |
When you're happy with what you have,
click on OK, and it adds the two features.
| | 01:54 |
Now what I'd like to do is add a louver.
To this face here.
| | 01:57 |
So I'll grab that louver, I'll drag it
out, let go.
| | 02:00 |
I'll flip the tool over, and I'll position
it.
| | 02:05 |
Click on Space Bar.
Come down here.
| | 02:07 |
want to zoom in on that point.
Add a dimension 1.0.
| | 02:12 |
And from the top edge here, I'm going to
dimension to that point as well.
| | 02:15 |
I'm ma say 2.0.
When you're happy with that, click on OK
| | 02:20 |
and click on OK one more time.
I have one of these features, now I could
| | 02:24 |
go back and add more louvers or add more
points in, add those to this face here.
| | 02:28 |
Or, I can use something like a pattern.
So I can go and take a pattern, can
| | 02:33 |
pattern along that edge.
And the feature I'd like to pattern is
| | 02:36 |
that louver I just added.
There it is, you can add the spacing,
| | 02:42 |
(SOUND) add how many, that we need, and
click OK.
| | 02:44 |
Louvers, embosses, forming tools.
Easy to add, easy to work with, and we can
| | 02:51 |
modify them.
And we'll learn how to modify and.
| | 02:53 |
Create our own in the next few movies.
| | 02:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying a forming tool| 00:00 |
Forming tools can be opened, adjusted, and
modified to your liking.
| | 00:03 |
All we need to do is open the Library
feature and make some modifications.
| | 00:07 |
Over here in the library, I see I have a
rectangular flange.
| | 00:10 |
This is a base feature that's installed
with SolidWorks.
| | 00:13 |
If I drag this over to my part, you can
see that makes a cut, and click OK.
| | 00:16 |
It cuts a little flange, however, it's too
small.
| | 00:19 |
So, I'd like to adjust that feature to be
a bigger part.
| | 00:21 |
No problem.
Let's click on it, right-click.
| | 00:24 |
Click on Open, and I conceive of a shape.
Now, this shape is created using multiple features.
| | 00:29 |
So, the first feature here, if I roll it
back with the history bar, is a base material.
| | 00:36 |
Let's look at the sketch, and extrude it
out.
| | 00:40 |
So, we're (INAUDIBLE) make sure, we're
going to extrude it a little bit longer.
| | 00:42 |
I'd say 70 millimeters, looks okay.
Come down to the next feature here, and
| | 00:47 |
this one I'm going to, instead of 30,
let's go ahead and make it 60, make it
| | 00:51 |
twice the size.
And go into the sketch below that, and
| | 00:55 |
instead of 20, let's go ahead and make
that 40.
| | 00:59 |
This will make it twice the size in both
directions.
| | 01:01 |
Click OK.
The fillets are fine, the orientation's fine.
| | 01:06 |
Everything else looks good here.
Let's go ahead and do a File > Save As.
| | 01:11 |
And under student flanges, we're going to
go ahead and add 60 by 40.
| | 01:17 |
Click on Save.
And if I come out of the lances, go back
| | 01:20 |
to (INAUDIBLE) flanges, you can see there
it shows up already.
| | 01:24 |
Exit out of that part, and I can drag and
drop that right onto my part.
| | 01:28 |
There it is.
You can position it as you like, then
| | 01:31 |
click on OK.
You've added the feature.
| | 01:34 |
SolidWorks comes pre-installed with some
base forming tools, and it's easy to add
| | 01:37 |
more, or modify the standard tools.
Just double check that your tool can work
| | 01:41 |
with the material that you selected.
| | 01:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a custom forming tool| 00:00 |
Forming tools can be design from the
ground up in solid works.
| | 00:03 |
And this video will cover the basics.
To get started, let's take a look at this part.
| | 00:06 |
What I have here on the screen is a piece
of sheet metal, or just basically a boss extrude.
| | 00:11 |
And I've got a sketch laid out on the top
surface.
| | 00:14 |
If I edit the sketch I can see what kind
of geometry I have here, and you can see
| | 00:18 |
all different shapes.
I'm not going to go through how to create
| | 00:20 |
the sketch.
You should be able to make the sketch on
| | 00:22 |
your own.
I just want to cover some of the basic
| | 00:24 |
sketch entities that are here.
Take a look at them, but you should be
| | 00:27 |
able to create the sketch on your own.
Exit out of that.
| | 00:30 |
Take a look at the surface it's on, which
this bottom surface here.
| | 00:32 |
And let's go ahead and create a boss
extrude using that sketch.
| | 00:37 |
So I'll choose that sketch, and make sure
we're going to be going in the correct direction.
| | 00:41 |
So flip that and we want to go to 0.15.
Click on OK and there's our first feature.
| | 00:47 |
Now because we're going to be forming
sheet metal around this piece, I wan't to
| | 00:51 |
make sure that we have nice rounded edges.
So let's at our first fillet.
| | 00:54 |
I'm going to type in 0.25 and I want to
fill it these corners on the inside of the
| | 01:01 |
part all the way around.
Click Okay, and there they are.
| | 01:08 |
Now, we want to add one more fillet here,
and we'll typed in a 0.1 fillet.
| | 01:11 |
And then I'll choose one of these edges to
propagate around the outside of the part.
| | 01:16 |
Click Okay, and add one more to the top
edge.
| | 01:19 |
Both of 0.1 and keep in mind, the minimum
radius of curvature of your sheet metal
| | 01:24 |
has to be bigger than this tool, so we
have to make sure that all these radiusses
| | 01:29 |
aren't too small so that the material can
flow around the outside of the shape and
| | 01:33 |
form that feature.
Once you've got this feature looking
| | 01:36 |
pretty good you want to remove the
material down here that's bellow the feature.
| | 01:39 |
To do that when I created this shape
originally, I have this sketch here.
| | 01:45 |
So I can reuse that sketch, do an extruded
cut and remove that material.
| | 01:49 |
I'll say Through All, click OK, and then
my material is gone.
| | 01:54 |
Now, under the sheet metal tools, we have
a feature called Forming Tool.
| | 01:59 |
Click on that, and the first question it
ask is the stopping face, and that's this
| | 02:02 |
one back here.
So, just choose the back of the part,
| | 02:05 |
that's where we want to end the feature,
on the back side.
| | 02:07 |
And if I wanted to make this and actual
cut, I could choose faces to remove, but
| | 02:11 |
in this case here, I'm just making an
emboss, so I want to be able to just leave
| | 02:15 |
the entire, shape in there.
It's just going to indent that into my
| | 02:18 |
piece of sheet metal.
I'd click on the insertion point if I want
| | 02:21 |
to move that around but the center of the
part looks just fine, so click OK and
| | 02:25 |
there it is, I've got my first forming
tool.
| | 02:27 |
Now, we want to make sure we save that
forming tool out to the library.
| | 02:31 |
Notice the library here, and we've got
some forming tools.
| | 02:34 |
So what I want to do is I want to save
that into the library, but first we need
| | 02:37 |
to save it to the desktop.
Click on File, click on Save, and save it out.
| | 02:42 |
Now go ahead, open up the library, click
on Add to Library.
| | 02:47 |
Choose the feature itself.
Give it a name.
| | 02:51 |
We'll call this a star emboss, and do we
want to put it under forming tools, under embosses?
| | 02:58 |
Sounds great.
Click OK, and there it is, star emboss.
| | 03:05 |
Now to use that shape, let's click over to
an open part, open the library features,
| | 03:12 |
grab the star emboss, drag it over, let
go, position it where we need it, and
| | 03:18 |
click OK.
And there's our shape.
| | 03:21 |
Custom, forming tool, complete.
When creating forming tools keep in mind
| | 03:26 |
that we must consider both the material
and the process to form the sheet metal.
| | 03:29 |
Keep in mind that just because it looks
nice on the computer doesn't always end up
| | 03:32 |
that way in real life.
| | 03:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Forming across a bend| 00:00 |
Forming tools can be used across bins, and
in this video, we will review how to build
| | 00:05 |
a custom tool and use that tool to add
gussets to the edge of a Sheet Metal part.
| | 00:08 |
Gussets are used to strengthen a bend and
are fairly common in sheet metal parts.
| | 00:13 |
To get started, let's take a look at the
few examples of what we're going to be making.
| | 00:17 |
In this case, here you can see we have a
sheet metal bracket, we have a gusset,
| | 00:20 |
that's been formed into the edge of that
bracket.
| | 00:23 |
This will strengthen this edge, and it's
pretty easy to do.
| | 00:26 |
Let's go take a look at the tool, come
down here to 6.4.tool and you can see this
| | 00:33 |
is the tool.
This can be pushed into the edge of that
| | 00:36 |
sheet metal piece and actually form.
That gusset.
| | 00:40 |
The green face or turquoise face here is
the stopping face, which is going to be
| | 00:45 |
pushed to the bottom of the part.
And then all the red faces will be removed
| | 00:49 |
from this tool.
And what's going to remaining is
| | 00:51 |
everything that's in yellow will be
actually pushed in to the edge of that part.
| | 00:55 |
Let's take a look at how to create this.
Let's start with a new part.
| | 00:58 |
Click on OK.
Start with a sketch, and let's use the
| | 01:03 |
right plane.
Choose the line tool.
| | 01:07 |
Start at the origin.
Come up, draw a little L shape.
| | 01:10 |
Okay.
Lay a couple dimensions, 0.125.
| | 01:19 |
And 1.25.
And these dimensions don't really matter
| | 01:24 |
that much.
But we want to get something that's close
| | 01:26 |
to the right size.
Hold down Ctrl, select those two.
| | 01:30 |
Click on make equal.
Same thing over here.
| | 01:33 |
Hold down this control.
Select both of those.
| | 01:37 |
(SOUND) Make equal.
And then go ahead and do an Extrude,
| | 01:40 |
(SOUND) let's do a mid-plane Extrude,
(SOUND) 1 inch, 1.0.
| | 01:47 |
(SOUND) Okay.
Next, let's choose the right plane again,
| | 01:50 |
start a sketch, (SOUND) use the Line tool,
click on Space bar, so I'm looking normal
| | 01:56 |
to it.
Go back to the line tool, grab this upper
| | 02:00 |
edge, draw a little triangle out on that
inside faces.
| | 02:04 |
And snap right to the origin, and let's go
ahead and add a equal relationship between
| | 02:10 |
the two, from there to there, make those
equal.
| | 02:14 |
And let's add a dimension on this lower
line of 1 inch, 1.0.
| | 02:19 |
Notice everything is fully defined in
black lines, (INAUDIBLE) with that, go to
| | 02:24 |
features, go to extrude and we want to do
a mid plane extrude again and just a
| | 02:30 |
quarter of an inch so 0.25.
Click OK.
| | 02:35 |
Next we want to radius, this top edge.
So, from this face to that face, to this face.
| | 02:40 |
And we want it to be one smooth
transition.
| | 02:42 |
So I'm going to go up here to fill it.
I'm a deselect what I have there.
| | 02:47 |
And I actually want a full round fillet.
So, I'm going to choose this face, this
| | 02:56 |
face and this face over here.
And that gives us a preview of what we're
| | 02:59 |
going to see.
It's going to be a full round between all
| | 03:01 |
3 of those faces.
Click on OK.
| | 03:03 |
Alright, looking good.
Now we're going to add a fillet to this
| | 03:07 |
corner in here, but we need to take a look
at the actual radius on the outside of our
| | 03:11 |
sheet metal part, and we have to match
that.
| | 03:14 |
So let's go over and measure it.
Go back to our part, let's grab the
| | 03:19 |
Evaluate toolbar.
Grab the Measure tool, and let's spin this
| | 03:23 |
around and measure this radius.
It says the radius here is eighth of an
| | 03:28 |
inch, or 0.125, and that's what we want to
add that radius to in the part.
| | 03:34 |
Exit out of that tool, let's go back to
the part and come up here to Features, Fillet.
| | 03:41 |
Constant radius, and let's choose a 0.125.
I want it on that edge there, as well as
| | 03:47 |
this edge over here.
And click OK, and I do want to keep that
| | 03:50 |
as a separate feature, so I can go back
and edit this if I needed to use a
| | 03:54 |
different thickness in material.
Let's go ahead and add one more fillet.
| | 03:58 |
And 0.125 is fine and fill it all around
the outside of that.
| | 04:02 |
Click OK and there's our tool looking
pretty good.
| | 04:05 |
However, right now even though the tool is
complete, we need to add it into a forming
| | 04:10 |
tool so let's go over to sheet metal,
let's click on forming tool.
| | 04:13 |
The first question is the stopping face
and that's the face down here, I want to
| | 04:17 |
actually push into the bottom surface.
Next is faces to remove and I want to
| | 04:21 |
remove everything that's not actually
going to be forming that gusset.
| | 04:25 |
So, this face, this face, this face, this
one, spin it around.
| | 04:29 |
Grab the top, the back, the side and the
bottom.
| | 04:33 |
So all that will be removed.
And this will fill it right there.
| | 04:37 |
Okay, looking good.
Now insertion point.
| | 04:40 |
And this is very important, so pay
attention to how we're going to place this.
| | 04:42 |
First off click on the space bar, click on
normal two.
| | 04:46 |
And you notice this little point right
here that's highlighted in blue.
| | 04:50 |
I want that point, which is my insertion
point.
| | 04:54 |
To be dragged up and put right off the
origin, so right on that inside edge of
| | 04:59 |
where we're going to be putting on this
edge of the Sheet Metal bracket.
| | 05:02 |
So you can see it's going to be right
there at the origin, and that's how we're
| | 05:06 |
going to align this with the edge of the
part.
| | 05:08 |
When you're happy with everything there,
click on OK, and now we've got ourselves a
| | 05:13 |
form tool for an edge gusset.
Let's go ahead and save that out, Save As.
| | 05:19 |
And I'm a call this one, 6.4 Tool 2.
Because I already got one tool created and
| | 05:26 |
this'll give me the second one.
Click on Save and then let's go ahead and
| | 05:29 |
add this to our Design Library.
So, click on Design Library, notice I
| | 05:34 |
already have existing gusted in here.
I want to add one more.
| | 05:37 |
So come up to the plus to add to library.
I select the entire tool.
| | 05:41 |
I'm going to call it gusted two.
I'm going to add it to the ribs folder of
| | 05:48 |
the forming tools and go ahead and click
on OK.
| | 05:52 |
Take a look over here in the library.
You can see there's the gusset two.
| | 05:55 |
Looks good.
Go ahead and close that part.
| | 05:59 |
And we're going to go ahead and push that
part into this corner here.
| | 06:02 |
So let's remove the the gusset we have.
And let's add a new one.
| | 06:08 |
Spin my part around.
Open up the design library.
| | 06:11 |
Grab that gusset, drag it out to the
window.
| | 06:14 |
Snap it onto that lower face.
He knows it showed up backwards.
| | 06:17 |
That's okay.
Click in the rotation angle box.
| | 06:20 |
Type in 180.
And then come over here to the positions tab.
| | 06:25 |
Now, we place that little orientation
right at the back edge.
| | 06:29 |
So click on Space Bar.
Click on Normal, too.
| | 06:31 |
And I want to turn the point tool off.
And then just drag that point right up to
| | 06:37 |
that back edge and I could even snap to
the midpoint if I wanted to.
| | 06:40 |
And don't worry about this extra line here
those just kind of move around with the
| | 06:43 |
tool, so all we're really concerned about
is that orientation point when your happy
| | 06:47 |
with that click on OK.
And there you have it.
| | 06:50 |
We formed that gusset right into that
corner.
| | 06:52 |
And we built our own custom tool.
Now if you're going to go and use this
| | 06:56 |
tool for other sheet metal thicknesses.
We might go back to that gusset.
| | 07:00 |
Open it up, I can just go back to the
gusset here.
| | 07:02 |
Right-click on it, click on Open, and we
can adjust these radiuses in here so that
| | 07:07 |
they match the exterior radius on the
sheet metal part we're going to be using
| | 07:11 |
the gusset on.
When working with gussets across bends, we
| | 07:14 |
need to pay close attention to the
material thickness and the flexibility of
| | 07:17 |
the material.
Gussets are great features to use however,
| | 07:20 |
they are also easy to mess up in solid
works so pay close attention to all the
| | 07:23 |
different features and radiuses.
| | 07:26 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Sheet Metal AssembliesBasic assembly techniques| 00:00 |
The tools for assembling sheet metal parts
are the same tools that we used to
| | 00:03 |
assemble solid parts.
However, there are a few tricks that will
| | 00:06 |
make things a little bit easier.
To get started, let's take a look at this
| | 00:09 |
assembly here.
I've got a Base feature here, which is the
| | 00:12 |
starting feature of my assembly, it's
fixed at the origin.
| | 00:15 |
I've got a circuit board here that we've
created with a few different connectors
| | 00:19 |
that are on there.
I've got some PEM hardware here for some standoffs.
| | 00:23 |
And I've got a little screw over here to
connect the parts together.
| | 00:27 |
Okay.
So, first things first, let's take a look
| | 00:29 |
at how this part was created.
Number one is, if I open that part, I can
| | 00:34 |
see that I have a origin right at the
center of my part.
| | 00:36 |
And that's really important to do.
If you have an origin at the center, that
| | 00:39 |
means you also have a right plane at the
center, you've got a top plane at the
| | 00:42 |
bottom of the part, and you got a front
plane right in the center.
| | 00:46 |
So, that makes it perfect for using some
type of a Mirror feature, some symmetry.
| | 00:49 |
This parts a symmetrical part, makes it
really easy.
| | 00:52 |
In future movies, we're going to be going
over how we create this part to make it
| | 00:55 |
symmetrical and to use some of those
techniques.
| | 00:59 |
Going back to that first assembly, same
thing with this piece here.
| | 01:03 |
I've got a assembly front plane, top
plane, and right plane that we can use.
| | 01:09 |
So, first thing I want to do is I want to
take this board and I want to put it down
| | 01:13 |
here above the base feature here.
I can do a dimension between the bottom
| | 01:18 |
and the top.
I can do a lot of things here.
| | 01:20 |
But before I do that, what I'd really like
to do is actually just use one of these
| | 01:23 |
PEM stand offs because that's what's
really going to determine the height of
| | 01:27 |
the board.
So, what I have already is this PEM is
| | 01:31 |
coincident with the bottom of the feature.
So, unfortunately, I don't have any holes
| | 01:36 |
here to locate where these PEMS are,
because those PEMs actually want to be
| | 01:39 |
right over where the holes and the circuit
board are.
| | 01:42 |
So, let's do that first.
Let's go to Mate.
| | 01:45 |
Let's choose a few Mate selections.
And there's a few other ways to do this
| | 01:48 |
quicker, but I'm just going to go through
the old fashion technique of just doing a
| | 01:52 |
concentric mate, put things together.
And notice my board's up here, so, I can
| | 01:56 |
move it down a little bit.
And I can move it over here a little bit.
| | 02:00 |
So, I have it outside of the rest of the
components.
| | 02:03 |
Click on that, inside of the hole, click
on the outside of this.
| | 02:07 |
Notice those components come together.
And do the same thing over here, couple
| | 02:10 |
more times.
Grab that hole.
| | 02:18 |
Now, what I have is, all these PEMs are
directly below the holes.
| | 02:26 |
Now, let's grab the bottom of the board,
and let's mate it to the top of one of the PEMs.
| | 02:32 |
Great.
Now, what I have is PEMs that locate
| | 02:35 |
wherever I have this board.
So, I can move the board either on center
| | 02:38 |
line, I can move it over and the PEMs
follow.
| | 02:41 |
Then what we want to do is we want to cut
holes in the chassis directly below where
| | 02:44 |
the PEMs are going to be.
But we'll do that later.
| | 02:47 |
For right now, let's locate the board.
So, notice the board has those planes in
| | 02:52 |
the center of it.
I like to use plane mates primarily,
| | 02:55 |
because I can make many modifications to
the board and the planes are always there.
| | 02:59 |
There's three fundamental planes in every
part we create.
| | 03:02 |
So, if I do a plane to plane mate, you can
never destroy those mates.
| | 03:06 |
So, let's click on the right plane of the
assembly and the right plane of the part,
| | 03:10 |
and go ahead and mate those two together.
Now, I could use the other plains to
| | 03:15 |
orient it on the front plain.
However, what's really more important here
| | 03:19 |
is the distance from this inside edge to
these components I have.
| | 03:23 |
So, I'm going to choose a distance made
from that face to this face here.
| | 03:29 |
I don't want them touching exactly, so,
let's it a little bit of spacing.
| | 03:32 |
I have about 20,000 so, 0.02.
Click on OK.
| | 03:37 |
And there you have a nice little gap, and
you can see that obviously our chassis is
| | 03:41 |
a little bit bigger than we need to hold
this board.
| | 03:44 |
So, we can come back out now and adjust
the chassis, and everything will
| | 03:46 |
automatically align to be in the correct
size.
| | 03:50 |
We have a couple of these components here
poking through the front sheet metal bezel.
| | 03:54 |
That's okay though, in a future movie,
we're going to go do some in context cuts
| | 03:57 |
and cut these in relationship to where the
components are behind.
| | 04:01 |
The last thing I wanted to point out here
was, that I've got this hole, it's a
| | 04:04 |
counter sunk screw, and I have a screw
here.
| | 04:06 |
And soon we're going to be building a
cover for this, and we're going to put it
| | 04:09 |
all together.
But right now, I just want to assemble
| | 04:11 |
that screw into that hole.
Now, I could use this inside face here,
| | 04:17 |
but the only problem is on a screw, you've
got these very slender little section here
| | 04:21 |
that's hard to work with, or you have this
tiny little edge up here that's hard to
| | 04:24 |
grab onto.
So, I could try to use some flat face to
| | 04:28 |
do a concentric mate.
But a lot easier mate here, which actually
| | 04:31 |
takes care of two birds with one stone, is
grab this whole face here, which is the
| | 04:35 |
angled face, and mate that together with
the angled face on the part.
| | 04:40 |
And by default, it chooses a concentric.
But that's not really what we want.
| | 04:43 |
We want coincident.
Click on coincident, and it brings it all
| | 04:46 |
the way together and mates the two parts
together perfectly.
| | 04:50 |
There are many different assembly
techniques that we can use in SolidWorks.
| | 04:53 |
Using planes to mate components together
is a real time saver, and makes your
| | 04:58 |
design and your assembly extremely robust.
| | 05:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding cuts in context| 00:00 |
When dealing with complex sheet metal
assemblies with many fasteners and connectors.
| | 00:04 |
Creating cuts in sheet metal can be
extremely complicated.
| | 00:07 |
If we add these cuts as in-context
features, we can reference the other
| | 00:11 |
components and make things much easier.
Let's take a look at this assembly here.
| | 00:14 |
I've got a circuit board here, and I've
got a sheet metal enclosure that we
| | 00:19 |
want to cut the holes for the connector
through.
| | 00:22 |
Now I can measure and try to align these
things and get the cutouts in the correct
| | 00:26 |
location, but that be allot of work and be
extremely complicated.
| | 00:29 |
Instead we can edit this sheet metal
bracket in context and use those as a reference.
| | 00:34 |
To do so, let's go ahead and click on this
part here and click on Edit Part.
| | 00:39 |
That will edit the part in context to the
assembly, and you can see here I've got
| | 00:45 |
all the other components grayed out now
and I'm working just on this component.
| | 00:48 |
You can tell you're in this mode by, this
is now highlighted in blue.
| | 00:53 |
And I can go down here and see all the
features that are making up that component.
| | 00:57 |
Let's click on that front face, click on
Sketch.
| | 01:00 |
And click on Normal To real quick.
Now you notice, I can see this one
| | 01:05 |
component here.
But I can't see any of those other
| | 01:07 |
connectors behind.
So what I'd like to do is change my
| | 01:11 |
display from Shaded With Edges down here
to Wire Frame.
| | 01:14 |
That way, I can see through and see all
the components that we have in our design.
| | 01:18 |
Next, I want to use the Corner Rectangle
command and I'm going to come up here and
| | 01:23 |
I'm going to draw a rectangle around this
component here.
| | 01:25 |
And I'm going to snap to the top of that
circuit board down here.
| | 01:29 |
Now I can add a few dimensions.
From the top of the connector to the top
| | 01:33 |
of the hole, maybe 20 thousandths of space
and I'll do the same thing a couple more times.
| | 01:38 |
And the cool thing about adding in
dimensions and relationships in context is
| | 01:44 |
if we go back to that circuit board.
And we move this component around later,
| | 01:48 |
those will automatically follow wherever
this component goes to.
| | 01:51 |
And that was a pretty simple thing.
We just added a box.
| | 01:53 |
But how about over here?
We've got a component here that's got some
| | 01:57 |
rounded corners, some angles.
That'll be a little bit harder to draw our ourselves.
| | 02:01 |
So we can use the Convert Entities
command.
| | 02:04 |
Let's go ahead and click on Convert
Entities.
| | 02:06 |
And we can choose these lines that go
around the outside of the part to bring
| | 02:11 |
over and convert.
Okay?
| | 02:16 |
When they're all selected, go ahead and
click on OK.
| | 02:18 |
And that brings those into our current
sketch.
| | 02:20 |
And then I can use those as an offset.
I'm going to offset by that same 20 thousandths.
| | 02:26 |
And go ahead and click on Make Base
Construction.
| | 02:29 |
That way, the existing entities here will
just be for construction lines.
| | 02:32 |
And we'll only be using this one new line
that we're creating.
| | 02:35 |
Add the 20 thousandths, click OK.
And there's our new line.
| | 02:39 |
And then over here, similar kind of thing.
We don't have a perfect profile to follow
| | 02:44 |
along out here.
But we can use a little bit of exterior
| | 02:46 |
referencing as well.
I'll create a rectangle.
| | 02:49 |
Snap around the outside other part.
We'll add a few dimensions, may be from
| | 02:53 |
this edge here to this one here.
20 thousandths, top and bottom.
| | 02:59 |
And over here as well.
Now I might want to make it look angled
| | 03:05 |
cut on this side here.
So I can add an in context cut, across
| | 03:09 |
there, we can make a relationship between
this line.
| | 03:12 |
Hold down Ctrl on that line, and make
those parallel, for one thing.
| | 03:17 |
And we can add a space between the two.
Again, 20 thousandths.
| | 03:23 |
And this time I'm going to use the Trim
tool and just trim out that corner.
| | 03:26 |
The only thing that happened here is this
blue line at the bottom.
| | 03:30 |
Because I cut off that corner, it's now
not snapped there, no problem.
| | 03:33 |
I can move it up, bring it back down, snap
it on that corner, and there's our cut.
| | 03:38 |
Now we can add fill its in here if we want
to or make any other changes to our cuts
| | 03:42 |
but so far, looks pretty good.
Let's go back up to Features, let's do an
| | 03:46 |
extruded cut.
Because we're working in sheet metal, we
| | 03:49 |
can use this Link To Thickness.
Click on Link To Thickness and it's
| | 03:53 |
going to go ahead and cut through that
first level of sheet metal.
| | 03:56 |
Click OK and let's switch back to Shaded
With Edges.
| | 04:00 |
You can see I've got a couple of cuts
there, and come back to my assembly.
| | 04:05 |
And they're there.
Cuts perfectly around the connectors and
| | 04:09 |
things are looking good.
Let's go back and see if we can make the
| | 04:12 |
cutouts follow the connectors if I move
one of the connectors on the circuit board.
| | 04:15 |
Let's click on this assembly here.
Let's open the assembly and maybe this
| | 04:21 |
connector here.
Let's look for its mates.
| | 04:24 |
You can see there's a distance made from
the edge.
| | 04:27 |
And let's go ahead and move that, instead
of 2.5, let's change it to 2.25.
| | 04:31 |
Click on OK.
That moves over.
| | 04:33 |
Let's go back to our assembly.
Rebuild.
| | 04:39 |
And you can see it just follows that
along.
| | 04:41 |
So I can move any of those components and
it makes it very robust design.
| | 04:44 |
They have all your cut outs, follow your
connectors.
| | 04:47 |
Especially when you're working with
circuit boards or any other type of
| | 04:50 |
components that are going to be rapidly
changing or changing often.
| | 04:53 |
It will really save your lot of time in
the long run.
| | 04:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating parts in the assembly| 00:00 |
One of the best ways to build sheet metal
assemblies is to create parts within the assembly.
| | 00:04 |
We have a couple of ways we can do this.
Now, come over to the Assembly tab.
| | 00:08 |
I can click on Insert Component, click on
the drop-down right below it.
| | 00:11 |
I can click on New Part.
This will add a new virtual component
| | 00:14 |
inside of our assembly.
And we can then save that out to the file system.
| | 00:17 |
That works okay, but I actually prefer the
more simple method of just starting a
| | 00:20 |
brand new part.
And go ahead and saving that out.
| | 00:24 |
So go to File > Save As, and I'll call
this one 7.3.4.
| | 00:28 |
Click on Save, and now I have a blank part
that's been saved to the file system.
| | 00:32 |
And notice, it has front plane, top plane,
right plane, and an origin.
| | 00:38 |
And that's all we need to be able to move
that into the assembly.
| | 00:41 |
Let's go back to our assembly.
And we can tile horizontally to look at
| | 00:45 |
all the parts.
And grab that new part and drag it into
| | 00:48 |
our assembly.
There it is.
| | 00:50 |
You can't see much because there's nothing
in it.
| | 00:53 |
But that's okay.
You can still see the part is here.
| | 00:55 |
And you can see it has an origin.
Well, there's an origin there and there's
| | 00:58 |
an origin in the middle of the assembly.
So I can select both of those by holding
| | 01:02 |
down the Ctrl key and then click on Mate.
Notice they'll slide together.
| | 01:06 |
And one thing cool about mating origins to
origins is that we can click on this check
| | 01:11 |
mark here for aligning axes.
So that will align the x, y, and z axes.
| | 01:15 |
So with one mate, we can align it in all
three axes.
| | 01:18 |
And that's all we need to pull those two
parts together.
| | 01:23 |
Once we have a part and they're aligned
and mated together.
| | 01:25 |
We can then start building our part.
So let's go to this part here, and click
| | 01:30 |
on Edit Part.
Now we've got this front plane in that
| | 01:34 |
part and that's where I want to start my
sketch on.
| | 01:36 |
So click on Sketch, click on Space bar,
click Normal To.
| | 01:41 |
And what I want to do is I want to create
a line that's going to go left all the way
| | 01:45 |
along this upper edge.
Around that corner and down to the top of
| | 01:48 |
this piece of sheet metal.
To get started, I'm going to start with
| | 01:51 |
the center line from the origin up to the
top.
| | 01:55 |
Then I'm going to grab the line, drag that
line down to the end.
| | 01:58 |
And then make a arch along that edge.
Try to grab that little point, there it is.
| | 02:04 |
And then bring it all the way down here to
the top of the sheet metal and snap to the end.
| | 02:08 |
I could also convert entities there if I
wanted to make it easier, but once I have
| | 02:13 |
the line, notice there's no dimensions.
Everything is fully defined because I
| | 02:16 |
snapped to a couple of the key the
components on the base.
| | 02:19 |
Go over here to Sheet Metal, go to Base
Flange tab.
| | 02:22 |
And notice that material is going to be on
the outside, which is great, that's
| | 02:27 |
exactly where we want it.
And the material thickness is fine, the
| | 02:32 |
radius is fine and the thickness, or the
Direction 1 thickness of the material says Blind.
| | 02:36 |
Actually, I want to call that Up To
Surface.
| | 02:38 |
And the surface I want to use is the front
of the enclosure.
| | 02:40 |
There's a nice preview of what's going to
happen.
| | 02:43 |
It's going to be bringing it all the way
up to that front face, and that's perfect.
| | 02:47 |
That way if the base changes size, this
cover will automatically scale to the
| | 02:51 |
correct size.
It'll be either wider or if I make the
| | 02:54 |
base wider because these components are
linked together, it'll automatically
| | 02:57 |
expand out in width as well.
When you're happy with that, click on OK.
| | 03:01 |
And there's my component.
Now, what I want to do, eventually, is
| | 03:04 |
mirror this component this way and that
way.
| | 03:06 |
However, before we do that, we want to add
a few more features.
| | 03:10 |
Let's go ahead and click on this face
here, click on Sketch and I want to make a
| | 03:14 |
little tab that's going to go down inside
this hole in the base.
| | 03:18 |
So let's click on Space bar, so we're
looking at the side of the unit.
| | 03:21 |
And grab the Rectangle tool.
We'll start right at the origin, bring
| | 03:26 |
that down, snap to the bottom of the
enclosure.
| | 03:28 |
And go ahead and grab the Smart Dimension
tool.
| | 03:32 |
Dimension from this face to that face or
that edge and type in 0.02.
| | 03:38 |
So we're going to add in 20 thousandths
gap between the two.
| | 03:40 |
That's going to make it a little bit
easier to put these things together
| | 03:43 |
especially after we add some paint to the
parts.
| | 03:46 |
When you're happy with that, we can come
up to Sheet Metal, click on Base Flange
| | 03:50 |
tab, and see I create a little tab.
Click OK.
| | 03:53 |
And there it is.
And then the last thing we might want to
| | 03:56 |
do it go over to Features, grab a Fill It,
and fill it out this corner, 100
| | 04:01 |
thousandths looks just fine.
And we're done.
| | 04:05 |
Now we can probably come in here and add
some other bracketry or put some things
| | 04:09 |
going to tie the cover down into these
holes.
| | 04:12 |
We can move those around if we need to but
we're just really illustrating how we can
| | 04:15 |
create this bracket inside of the
assembly.
| | 04:18 |
And this cover will now be part of that
assembly in context.
| | 04:22 |
So let's go up to Mirror.
Let's choose a mirror plane.
| | 04:25 |
And pick this face here on the edge of the
part.
| | 04:29 |
And instead of a featured mirror, I
actually want to mirror that entire body.
| | 04:32 |
I want all those features at one time as a
body.
| | 04:35 |
So pick the body.
And go ahead and click on OK.
| | 04:38 |
Then you come over here.
(SOUND).
| | 04:42 |
Select that entire face.
Again, come up to Mirror.
| | 04:46 |
Bodies to mirror, I want that entire body.
And click on OK.
| | 04:52 |
When you're happy with everything, looks
good.
| | 04:54 |
Go ahead and exit out of the assembly.
And there's our finished part with a
| | 04:58 |
cover, all in context.
I also want to try out one other thing to
| | 05:02 |
make sure we have this looking the right
size.
| | 05:04 |
Let's go ahead and open up this base piece
and make a couple changes to it.
| | 05:08 |
This is actually an equation driven base.
And if I open this, I can manage the equations.
| | 05:12 |
Let's go ahead and change the height of
this enclosure from 1 to 3.
| | 05:19 |
And let's make it, instead of 6.25 long,
let's go ahead and make it 9 inches.
| | 05:25 |
Click OK.
Those (INAUDIBLE) change the entire
| | 05:28 |
enclosure by a couple of equations.
And let's just go back to our assembly and
| | 05:32 |
see if it works.
Obviously, this is the wrong size.
| | 05:33 |
But I just want to illustrate it.
Go back, grab my assembly.
| | 05:39 |
Rebuild, and there you have it.
Automatically adjusts in size, height, and
| | 05:43 |
width in context to my assembly.
| | 05:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using patterns and mirrors| 00:00 |
In this movie, we'll be covering
patterning and mirrors.
| | 00:03 |
We can really use the power of SolidWorks
when we start multiplying parts across an assembly.
| | 00:06 |
Just like we can pattern features or
bodies, we can also pattern parts in an assembly.
| | 00:12 |
To get started, let's take a look at this
example.
| | 00:13 |
We have this little bracket.
And we want to pattern this across this part.
| | 00:18 |
There's also a small hole.
Right below it.
| | 00:22 |
So, first thing's first, I want to go and
pattern that hole in this part.
| | 00:26 |
So, let's open that part, (SOUND) and
let's use some patterning tools.
| | 00:30 |
So, let's go to Linear pattern, and let's
choose My First Direction, which is
| | 00:34 |
going to be along this top edge.
And my spacing is 2.35, I'd like to have
| | 00:38 |
five of those.
And the feature that I'd like to pattern
| | 00:41 |
would be this cut.
There they are, and I also want to go in
| | 00:45 |
the other direction.
So, direction two, I'm going to go along
| | 00:48 |
this top edge and I'm going to pattern one
inches apart times 12.
| | 00:53 |
When you're happy with what it looks like,
go ahead and click on the green check mark
| | 00:57 |
and we've added all of those holes to that
part quite easily.
| | 01:01 |
Go ahead and save that out.
And jump back over to our assembly.
| | 01:05 |
Now, in our assembly, we have just one
part covering one of those holes but we
| | 01:09 |
would like to have that same little part
covering all those holes.
| | 01:13 |
No problem.
Let's jump into linear patterns, let's
| | 01:15 |
grab our first edge going in this
direction here.
| | 01:19 |
And we want to make sure we're matching
the same spacing we used when we created
| | 01:22 |
these holes originally.
Which was 2.35 times 5 of those.
| | 01:27 |
And the component I'd like to pattern is
this one, right?
| | 01:29 |
So, let's go down to that box.
Click, and then choose that component.
| | 01:34 |
You can see they pattern across my second
direction.
| | 01:38 |
I want to go in this direction here.
And again, 12 of those on a one inch spacing.
| | 01:44 |
I also have the ability to skip certain
instances of these parts.
| | 01:48 |
By clicking in this box here, I get all
these little pink dots that show up on the
| | 01:52 |
top of the parts.
And I can delete any one of these that I want.
| | 01:54 |
And that's really handy when you're
working with a large array of parts and
| | 01:58 |
you might not want them on all the
components in the assembly.
| | 02:02 |
If you want them back, just go ahead and
delete any one of these out of that box
| | 02:06 |
and they come right back.
When you're happy with your linear
| | 02:09 |
pattern, go ahead and click on the green
check mark and there they are.
| | 02:13 |
We can always go back and change this
patten later by editing the feature,
| | 02:16 |
jumping back in, changing the spacing or
changing the different parts that are
| | 02:21 |
going to be in the assembly.
Your happy, get out of there and let's
| | 02:24 |
come back.
The next thing I was going to cover is
| | 02:27 |
mirroring commands.
So, mirror is pretty much the same thing.
| | 02:30 |
I just need to choose a face or plane to
mirror something over.
| | 02:32 |
In this case here I've got all these
component.
| | 02:34 |
I want to mirror all them over here to the
other side.
| | 02:37 |
To do so, let's go under the Linear
pattern box, and click on the drop down.
| | 02:41 |
And at the bottom of that, you'll see
Mirror Component.
| | 02:45 |
The first question is my mirror plane.
Well, I've created a new plane here called
| | 02:48 |
Plane 1.
I'm going to go ahead and choose that.
| | 02:50 |
And my components to mirror, I'm going to
go ahead and choose all of them.
| | 02:53 |
I want to choose the Plate, the Original
Part and that entire Pattern.
| | 02:59 |
Click on OK and there we have it.
A really powerful tool in SolidWorks, we
| | 03:05 |
can pattern and mirror all these
components at once really starting with
| | 03:08 |
only a few simple items.
| | 03:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Sheet Metal DrawingsUsing ordinate dimensions| 00:00 |
Ordinate dimensions are used a lot in
sheet metal.
| | 00:02 |
Primarily because there's so many items on
most sheet metal parts, and it's hard to
| | 00:05 |
detail using other dimensioning
techniques.
| | 00:07 |
To use other dimensions, we first need to
select a starting point where our ordinate
| | 00:11 |
dimensions are going to be coming from.
In this case here, let's go over here to
| | 00:14 |
Annotation, click on the drop down under
Smart Dimension.
| | 00:17 |
And let's go ahead and grab either
Ordinate dimension, Horizontal or Vertical
| | 00:22 |
Ordinate Dimension.
Let's start off with horizontal.
| | 00:25 |
In this case here, I want to use this edge
here as my starting point for my ordinate.
| | 00:29 |
Go ahead and click on that, and then it
applies a little zero mark to your cursor.
| | 00:33 |
(INAUDIBLE) You can move that up and down.
Find a place that you'd like to place it
| | 00:36 |
and click OK.
Now, this is in ordinate dimensioning
| | 00:38 |
mode, and anything that I click on is
going to add an ordinate dimension.
| | 00:41 |
So, for instance, I have a couple holes
right.
| | 00:44 |
I'll pick the upper one, so, I have line
that goes through both of them and it
| | 00:47 |
shows the dimension here.
A slot like this, let's go ahead and pick
| | 00:50 |
the front side and back side of the slot.
And you can see that that actually,
| | 00:53 |
(INAUDIBLE) exactly the same length here,
so, that's pretty handy.
| | 00:56 |
How about the top of that arc, looks good.
And come over here do the same thing, I
| | 01:00 |
can just snap the front side, back side of
that slot, snap to the hole, and to the
| | 01:05 |
end of the part.
So, really quickly you can add a lot of
| | 01:07 |
dimensions to a part.
And it's pretty clean, it all goes in one line.
| | 01:10 |
And you have a few different options here
as to how you want them to be placed.
| | 01:14 |
You can change your dimensioning text.
You can change your leaders.
| | 01:18 |
You can change the arrow style you have
between the different components if you'd like.
| | 01:23 |
And you know, you can change the leader
between the two.
| | 01:25 |
You can change break lines if they break
around other items.
| | 01:28 |
You can come over here to other.
And if you want it to override the font,
| | 01:32 |
you can do that as well.
Once you're happy with that, go ahead and
| | 01:34 |
click on OK.
And that's our first ordinate dimension.
| | 01:38 |
Next, let's do a vertical dimension.
So, click on Vertical Ordinate Dimension.
| | 01:43 |
In this case here, I want to start my part
down here at this bottom edge.
| | 01:46 |
Go ahead and click there to start, and
then I can dimension up the part.
| | 01:52 |
And just click on all the important
entities all the way up the part, and I'll
| | 01:57 |
click on the end.
But I might also want to define the
| | 01:59 |
thickness here for this inside edge here.
I can always go backwards if I miss those
| | 02:03 |
on the other side, and just add them in.
No problem.
| | 02:06 |
Click OK, and there they all are.
Looks good.
| | 02:10 |
If you want to edit any one of these, for
instance this one here, you've got a hole
| | 02:14 |
here, but you actually have one over here
on the other side of the part as well.
| | 02:16 |
So, you can just click on that with one
individual dimension, and just give it a
| | 02:21 |
2x in front of there.
Then I can do the same thing on this,
| | 02:26 |
mention there 2x, and this one here.
And (UNKNOWN) we have got a nice flow of
| | 02:33 |
our information, and all of our dimensions
are fully defined across the part.
| | 02:39 |
Looks good.
Alright.
| | 02:40 |
When we are happy with that, then we might
to dimension some of these other items here.
| | 02:43 |
For instance, this one here.
So, I am going to choose to start from the
| | 02:46 |
bottom of the part.
So, I am going to go up to Ordinate Dimension.
| | 02:50 |
Do a vertical ordinate.
Go ahead and choose the bottom of the part.
| | 02:54 |
Not very many items here, but let's go
ahead and choose this one here, and top of
| | 02:57 |
the part.
That's great.
| | 02:59 |
The only thing I wanted to point out here,
is because I'm starting at the bottom of
| | 03:01 |
this base feature.
If I go up to the top here and I want to
| | 03:05 |
dimension things here, I want to make sure
I continue to choose that same edge.
| | 03:08 |
So, I can do again the Ordinate Dimension
in vertical, pick this first and then
| | 03:14 |
dimension this way as well.
I just want to make sure where always
| | 03:17 |
starting from the same edge.
Each similar part, same thing if I had
| | 03:20 |
this top view if I had a bottom view, I
would want to continue to maintain
| | 03:23 |
starting from the left edge here.
If I were to bring it over here and give
| | 03:28 |
it to back view on the back side, then
that edge will be on the fore side.
| | 03:32 |
So, just keep that in mind when you're
using ordinate dimensions or any
| | 03:34 |
dimensions really, to keep track of what's
going on, where the dimensions are and how
| | 03:37 |
they're being dimension.
Ordinate dimensions are used primarily in
| | 03:40 |
sheet metal.
Because a lot of times there are so many
| | 03:43 |
items to dimension that are using typical
baseline or chain dimensions, would just
| | 03:47 |
be too complicated and the drawing become
too messy.
| | 03:49 |
So, ordinate allows us to pack in a lot of
dimensions across a part, and really get
| | 03:53 |
all the data we need and still look fairly
organized and clean on the drawing sheet.
| | 03:58 |
We can use both the Standard Dimensioning
tools, the Ordinate Dimensioning tools,
| | 04:01 |
and there's even Auto dimensioning we can
use with ordinant dimensions.
| | 04:03 |
When you're using ordinant dimensions,
make sure you go ahead and choose an edge
| | 04:07 |
and then follow the edge through the
different views of that part so that it
| | 04:10 |
stays consistent from view to view.
| | 04:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at sheet options| 00:00 |
When working with Sheet metal, there are a
few sheet options we might want to look
| | 00:03 |
at, to make things a little bit easier for
us.
| | 00:05 |
If we go up here to the Options tab at the
top of the screen and open it up.
| | 00:10 |
You can see that we've got a few different
options under System Options or Document Properties.
| | 00:14 |
So, under Document Properties, you come
down to the very bottom, there's actually
| | 00:17 |
a tab for Sheet metal.
So, we can add a lot of data here.
| | 00:21 |
We can look at bend lines, I can change
the directions and colors of different
| | 00:25 |
items here.
I can look at bend notes, and where I'd
| | 00:28 |
like them if I want to add bend notes
above, below, or with leader, if I'm
| | 00:32 |
going to add them to the drawing.
I can come down and change the text, I can
| | 00:35 |
change the Leader options.
A lot of things here I can just kind of
| | 00:39 |
play with to make sure that's looking
good.
| | 00:41 |
I also want to point out up here under
detailing, auto instead on creation is a
| | 00:45 |
much thing that we can check mark here in
turn on.
| | 00:48 |
One of the ones I like to use a lot is
center marks because,all times chief metal
| | 00:52 |
parts are going to have lot of holes and a
quiet a bit of work to add those manually.
| | 00:55 |
So, if we just go ahead and turn that on
that will automatically add those to the
| | 00:59 |
joint room we bring it in.
Center lines are sometimes nice to bring
| | 01:02 |
as well but depends on what the product
you are working with and how it looks.
| | 01:07 |
Another one is virtual sharps here I like
to use a plus, nay of these will work, but
| | 01:12 |
plus seems to work the best for using
small dimensions.
| | 01:16 |
Let's go ahead and click on OK and I'll
point that little plus symbol out.
| | 01:20 |
A lot of time you are working with Sheet
metal pieces that you need to have some
| | 01:23 |
kind of virtual sharp showing where this
line and this line may be intersect together.
| | 01:28 |
There's a trick in SolidWorks that makes
that happen, you pick the first line here,
| | 01:32 |
and then you hold down Control, select the
second line.
| | 01:35 |
And then you come up here to the Point
command.
| | 01:37 |
And as soon as you do that, it actually
adds that virtual sharp point right in
| | 01:40 |
there between the two lines.
It's kind of a little hidden secret inside
| | 01:43 |
of SolidWorks.
And that's especially useful if you're
| | 01:45 |
using some type of an angle that's not a
right angle like this.
| | 01:49 |
because I could easily pick this dimension
here.
| | 01:50 |
But if this was a, like, a 60 degree
angle.
| | 01:52 |
There would be nothing there.
To choose from, so by placing a virtual
| | 01:56 |
sharp in there, it makes it really handy.
If we want to go and edit the base sheet
| | 02:00 |
formats we're using in our drawings here
we can always right-click and Edit Sheet
| | 02:04 |
Format and we can go here and adjust some
of these dimensions or tolerances in the block.
| | 02:10 |
Notice there's nothing in here, so we
probably need to go in here and adjust that.
| | 02:13 |
That's especially important when you're
working with Sheet metal because the
| | 02:16 |
dimensions are generally looser in Sheet
metal than they are in machine parts.
| | 02:20 |
In this template here, we don't have any
at all, so we definitely need to add these
| | 02:23 |
in, either fractional, angular and fill
all this out.
| | 02:26 |
So, you're going to have a two place
decimal, a three place decimal and our
| | 02:28 |
angular dimensions to find here.
While I'm in here, I can also add in a
| | 02:33 |
logo, change up some text, and I just
want to point out real quick.
| | 02:37 |
An easy way to do that is to go up to
Tools, go down to Block and click on Insert.
| | 02:43 |
And I've got a logo of a company called
Two Trees here, that's just a sample company.
| | 02:47 |
And I can go ahead and place that logo
right here in my drawing.
| | 02:50 |
And if I didn't like that I can always
choose a different logo from the file
| | 02:53 |
system, but just basically browse to the
logo.
| | 02:55 |
It needs to be a dwg or dxf or a solid
block.
| | 02:59 |
Place it in your drawing, and you're good
to go.
| | 03:02 |
When you're happy with your changes to
your sheet format, you can add a logo in
| | 03:06 |
or whatever else you need to do.
Right click > Edit Sheet, and you're back
| | 03:10 |
to the starting point of working with the
drawings.
| | 03:13 |
All of the tools are the exactly same for
dimensioning and working with drawings.
| | 03:17 |
(UNKNOWN) Sheet metal and machine parts,
there's a couple little tricks that you
| | 03:19 |
might add in there to work with Sheet
metal parts that'll make things just a
| | 03:22 |
little bit easier.
| | 03:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating flat patterns| 00:00 |
There are 2 methods for creating flat
patterns in Solid Works, the first is from
| | 00:04 |
the part file and the second is from the
drawing view.
| | 00:06 |
We got a drawing here of a part that we
are looking to making flat pattern for,
| | 00:09 |
and before I make a flat pattern for, I
want to make sure I go back to the file
| | 00:13 |
and double check with the bend deduction
value are set correctly, so when this part
| | 00:17 |
flattens out its the correct size.
Let's click on the part, open the part and
| | 00:22 |
there it is.
Alright, first things first, I want to
| | 00:24 |
check is these radiuses here and the bend
deduction.
| | 00:28 |
So, click on the Sheet Metal Feature.
Click on Edit Feature, and let's double
| | 00:33 |
check these values.
So, we've got an 0.30 radius.
| | 00:35 |
I've got 0.48 thick steel, and the bend
deduction I'm using there is 0.75.
| | 00:39 |
And that's correct for the tooling we
have.
| | 00:42 |
Click on OK.
That looks good.
| | 00:44 |
There are couple of ways to flatten out an
part in sheet metal tools.
| | 00:47 |
At the top you see a flatten button, just
go ahead and click on that and your part
| | 00:51 |
will flatten up, or un-check that then
come down here to the flat pattern in the
| | 00:56 |
tree, right click on it and say
unsuppress.
| | 01:00 |
Again, it will flatten out the part, and
if you open up the drop down below that
| | 01:04 |
you can see I have got a box for bend
lines, I've got a Bounding box and then I
| | 01:09 |
have the 2 bends that are inside of that
part.
| | 01:11 |
I even have the sketch for the
transformation of some other components.
| | 01:16 |
So everything is kind of built into that
little folder there, and if you want to
| | 01:19 |
you can actually even go to each one of
these bends and suppress just that one.
| | 01:24 |
So you can maybe have one of the bends
bent up and the other one not.
| | 01:27 |
And you kind of work with it in that
setting.
| | 01:30 |
When you're happy with what you have, get
back out of that mode.
| | 01:33 |
Let's jump back into the drawing.
In this case here, to build a flat
| | 01:36 |
pattern, I could put it on the same sheet
here, but I'd prefer to have a 1-to-1 flat pattern.
| | 01:41 |
So let's make anew sheet.
Right now, I've got this whole border and
| | 01:45 |
title block down here, which I don't
really want.
| | 01:46 |
So right-click, click on Properties, come
over here and where it says display sheet
| | 01:51 |
format, go ahead and turn that off.
And then come down here to custom size.
| | 01:55 |
In this case here, I'm just looking for a
regular 11 by 8 1/2 sheet of paper, and
| | 02:02 |
click on OK.
Now I'm ready to place a flat pattern.
| | 02:05 |
Let's go up to model view.
Select the item we want.
| | 02:09 |
Which there's only one open right now,
click on Next.
| | 02:11 |
And then down here under orientation I can
click on this check mark for Flat pattern.
| | 02:17 |
Place it where you want it, and then
escape to get out of the flat pattern command.
| | 02:21 |
Now I can move this around the screen, I
can click on the rotate view, I can spin
| | 02:25 |
that around so it's in portrait mode.
And make sure that one thing is, that we
| | 02:30 |
have a 1-to-1 pattern here.
So I want to make sure that instead of
| | 02:33 |
using custom scale, I want to say use
sheet scale, and then click OK.
| | 02:37 |
And let's double check again, under
properties, we are using a 1-to-1 scale,
| | 02:41 |
that's really important otherwise your
parts will come back being half the size
| | 02:45 |
or too big, so double check you get a
one-to-one to make sure your parts are at
| | 02:48 |
the correct scale.
Once you have that, you've got a flat
| | 02:51 |
pattern ready to save to DXF, and we'll be
covering that in the next movie.
| | 02:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving to DXF or DWG| 00:00 |
When sending out parts for laser cutting,
water jet cutting, flame cutting, plasma
| | 00:04 |
cutting, or routing cutting.
We need to create a DXF or DWG file.
| | 00:08 |
There are many options to choose from.
So let's go over them.
| | 00:10 |
From the drawing view, you can see that
I've got this part we looked at in the
| | 00:14 |
previous move.
And our sheet 2 has a one to one flat
| | 00:17 |
pattern ready to save out as a DXF or DWG.
To save this out, it's pretty easy.
| | 00:21 |
Just go up here to File > Save As.
And choose from the drop down, DXF or DWG.
| | 00:30 |
If you click on DWG, and click on the
options tools.
| | 00:32 |
I can see that I've got quite a few
different options I can choose from here.
| | 00:35 |
I can choose the version I'm saving a file
out to all the way back to r12 Autocad to r2210.
| | 00:57 |
When you're happy with your options you
have, go ahead and click on OK and click
| | 01:06 |
on Save.
Now you've got a DWG or JIG file on the
| | 01:09 |
file system.
Let's jump over and take a look at em.
| | 01:12 |
So here's the file I just saved.
It's 90 KB.
| | 01:14 |
And I also have some examples of some
other files that are exactly the same
| | 01:18 |
file, but I've saved that in different
file formats.
| | 01:20 |
Under here there are all exactly the same
part however I've saved them with
| | 01:23 |
different options in this case here its
8.4 which is the same file but then its R
| | 01:28 |
2002 with poling lines.
You could see I also saved it as R 02 with spines.
| | 01:36 |
The files are the exact same size.
That doesn't effect anything.
| | 01:39 |
But how about if I got back to R12?
R12 with splines is 363 kilobytes.
| | 01:44 |
Quite a bit bigger.
R12 spline but as a DFX file versus a DWG
| | 01:49 |
is actually quite a bit bigger.
So you can see between these file types,
| | 01:53 |
I've got all the way from the smallest of
25 kilobytes, all the way to over a meg
| | 01:57 |
for that same file.
So keep in mind when you're saving out
| | 02:00 |
file types which ones really work out
well.
| | 02:02 |
And I find this R 2000 through 2002 using
poly lines or splines works out the best
| | 02:07 |
for most situations.
Let's jump over to solid works.
| | 02:11 |
And let's go ahead and open up this part.
Let's go back to sheet one, grab the part,
| | 02:16 |
and click on open.
The second method for saving out flat
| | 02:19 |
patterns to DWG or DXF is right from the
tree.
| | 02:22 |
The bottom of the tree.
If I right click on flat pattern, I can go
| | 02:26 |
down to the bottom here.
And say export DXF or DWG.
| | 02:28 |
Click on okay.
(SOUND).
| | 02:30 |
Save a copy.
And it gives me an option to save it out.
| | 02:34 |
I'm going to put it in the folder as a DXF
file, looks fine.
| | 02:38 |
Or I can even save it as a DWG.
I already have one in there.
| | 02:41 |
So let's go ahead and just overwrite that.
I can chose the same options I did before.
| | 02:46 |
Click on OK and click on Save.
I'll replace the file that was there and
| | 02:51 |
then it gives me a few options as far as I
want to export sheet metal, the geometry
| | 02:55 |
or any other things I want to include in
that export.
| | 02:59 |
Click on OK when you're done.
And its going to give us a preview of
| | 03:02 |
exactly what's going to be output I can
even remove some of the entities before I
| | 03:06 |
save it.
Sometimes there's going to be bend lines
| | 03:08 |
or folds you don't want in the export file
and this is a great time to remove them
| | 03:13 |
before you save the file.
When you're happy with what you have, go
| | 03:16 |
ahead and click on Save, and there we go.
Flat patterns are an essential part of
| | 03:21 |
using sheet metal parts, and almost all
processes for creating flat patterns in
| | 03:25 |
the real world use DXF or DWG files.
| | 03:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automation with SolidWorks Task Scheduler| 00:00 |
The Task Scheduler is awesome, and it can
do a lot of work for you.
| | 00:04 |
If you've never seen it before, it's
going to be a treat.
| | 00:06 |
Text Scheduler is not actually part of
SolidWorks itself.
| | 00:09 |
It's a SolidWorks add-on program that can
be launched independently.
| | 00:13 |
You're going to Task Scheduler in the same
installed directory that you had installed
| | 00:17 |
SolidWorks in.
That's normally a secondary application.
| | 00:19 |
Once you get it fired up, let's go ahead
and take a look at some of the things it
| | 00:23 |
can do.
So over here on the left, you can see you
| | 00:25 |
can convert files, dissect files, update
files, print files, import, export, all
| | 00:30 |
kinds of other great things you can do
down here.
| | 00:32 |
The ones that I use the most are export
files or print files.
| | 00:36 |
And printing doesn't seem like that big of
a task.
| | 00:38 |
But what if you've worked on a design?
You've got a hundred drawings you need to
| | 00:41 |
print out.
And you like to have them all print out
| | 00:43 |
automatically without having to open each
one.
| | 00:45 |
And click on print.
You can load it up in the Task Scheduler.
| | 00:48 |
Have it print 'em out.
And when you come back, they're all ready
| | 00:51 |
to go.
But even harder than that would be maybe
| | 00:53 |
exporting files, maybe you need to send
out files in .PDF or .GWG or DXF format,
| | 00:58 |
and you've got a lot of files to work
with.
| | 01:00 |
Wouldn't it be great if the Task Scheduler
could just kind of do a lot of your work
| | 01:02 |
for you and export the files.
And you can do that maybe over lunch, when
| | 01:06 |
you come back from lunch, all files are
ready to zip up and send away.
| | 01:09 |
Let's take a look.
Export files.
| | 01:12 |
You can name the task, if you'd like.
You can choose the format you'd like to
| | 01:15 |
save it as.
In this case I'm going to save it as a DWG file.
| | 01:19 |
And we're going to add a folder.
You can add individual files or an entire folder.
| | 01:22 |
So in this case here I'm going to go to
Chapter eight, 8.5 and I'm going to choose
| | 01:27 |
everything in that folder.
And you can even include subfolders, and
| | 01:30 |
you can recourse through all the different
files and folders you have in that
| | 01:34 |
directory, and make drawings or exports
for all those.
| | 01:37 |
Down here at the bottom, you can run it
once or you can run it daily or weekly or
| | 01:41 |
monthly, so you can have this task running
all the time and backing up your files or
| | 01:45 |
saving them out to different formats.
You can save the files in the original
| | 01:48 |
folder or you can make the option to
choose a new folder.
| | 01:52 |
You may go ahead and choose that out, and
down here to exercise files and then to
| | 01:57 |
chapter eight, 8.5 and I have made a
couple of other sub folders called DWG and PDF.
| | 02:01 |
I am going to choose DWG.
Click Okay, and got that dialed in.
| | 02:06 |
Then come down here to options, and I can
choose which version of AutoCAD I'd like
| | 02:10 |
to export this to.
Which sheets, active sheets.
| | 02:14 |
or all sheets.
All sheets are fine for this.
| | 02:16 |
And click on OK.
When you're happy with it, go ahead and
| | 02:19 |
click on finish, and it shows up here.
This is going to automatically launch
| | 02:22 |
SolidWorks in the background and create
the .DWG files, export them to the file
| | 02:26 |
format, do this all behind the scenes and
here it goes.
| | 02:30 |
When it's complete, your files will be in
the folders you need, and the task is complete.
| | 02:34 |
Let's go ahead and take a look in that
folder, in DWG.
| | 02:38 |
You can see I've got two pages of that
drawing and they're both export, all while
| | 02:42 |
I was getting a coffee break.
| | 02:43 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Prepping for manufacturing| 00:00 |
Prior to sending parts out for
manufacturing, it's always a good idea to
| | 00:03 |
review all the files.
Make sure that all the parts fit together
| | 00:06 |
in the assembly and there is no
interference.
| | 00:08 |
SolidWorks has some nice tools to help out
with the work.
| | 00:11 |
The first tool I like to use is just
basically the View tool.
| | 00:13 |
Click on the top of this part, click on
Normal tool/g, and come over here and
| | 00:17 |
change from Shaded With Edges down to Wire
Frame.
| | 00:20 |
This allows me to look through the part,
and double check all the interferences or gaps.
| | 00:26 |
In this case here, I've got a tab that's
going to be fitting into this hole.
| | 00:29 |
I'm expecting to have a little bit of a
clearance gap between the two faces here.
| | 00:34 |
We you add some paint or some plate to
these parts, more than likely, you're
| | 00:36 |
going to fill up some of that gap.
And you want to make sure that these parts
| | 00:40 |
will go together easily.
I can zoom in here on the screw, make sure
| | 00:43 |
that it's going to be fitting correctly.
Notice, the screw is sitting a little bit
| | 00:48 |
outside of that front face.
That might be an issue, so, I might need
| | 00:50 |
to address that in the future.
Can also look over here, take a look at
| | 00:54 |
the corners, and everything else looks
pretty good.
| | 00:57 |
When you're happy with that, go ahead and
change it back to Shaded With Edges, and
| | 01:01 |
take a look at the part.
SolidWorks also has a bunch of tools under
| | 01:04 |
the Evaluate Toolbar to help us out as
well.
| | 01:07 |
We can do Studies, Interference Detection,
Clearance Detection, Hole Alignment,
| | 01:10 |
Measure, Mass Properties, and a whole
bunch of other things that we can use.
| | 01:14 |
The first thing I want to look at is
Interference Detection.
| | 01:16 |
Click on that, and click on Calculate.
(SOUND) Uh-oh, it looks like we have quite
| | 01:22 |
a few interferences.
Let's take a look at what some of those are.
| | 01:25 |
The first one here if I click on it,
expand it out, you can see the parts that
| | 01:28 |
are involved in making this problem.
So, you can say the display port here is
| | 01:32 |
interfering with circuit board.
Well, there is a bunch of leads that are
| | 01:36 |
pushing through that circuit board that we
don't have holes for.
| | 01:39 |
So, we may need to talk to a board
designer and add a few more holes.
| | 01:43 |
Let's go through a few other ones.
And you can see, we have quite a few to go
| | 01:47 |
through the list.
And most of them having to do with the
| | 01:50 |
circuit board.
But here at the bottom, I can see oh, I've
| | 01:52 |
got a PEM that's pressed into the sheet
metal, but there's no hole below that PEM
| | 01:58 |
for the fastener to go through.
What we need to do it go back, open up the
| | 02:02 |
file, modify the base feature, add the
holes, and re-run the interference
| | 02:06 |
detection to make sure that, that clears
the problem.
| | 02:08 |
If you're having a hard time viewing this,
you can always go down to the bottom and
| | 02:12 |
you can change from Wire Frame to hidden,
which hides all the other components, to
| | 02:16 |
Transparent, to the Current View.
So, a bunch of different options of how
| | 02:19 |
you might want to look at that.
I think the hidden works out really well,
| | 02:22 |
because you can see the two components
that are interfering and what the problems are.
| | 02:26 |
When you're happy with that, click on OK.
And at this point in time, you might
| | 02:31 |
want to run a few of these other tools
here.
| | 02:33 |
Anyway you look at it, running through
some of these other tools to evaluate your
| | 02:37 |
part prior to sending them out will save
you quite a bit of time and money in the
| | 02:41 |
long run.
| | 02:41 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 |
Thank you for watching this course.
Before we finish, I want to refer you to a
| | 00:03 |
few other resources that could be of
interest.
| | 00:05 |
First off, if you haven't already, check
out my course; SolidWorks 2012 Essential
| | 00:10 |
Training on Lynda.com.
This is a great course that really gets
| | 00:13 |
you up to speed quick with SolidWorks.
Next, for more information on sheet metal
| | 00:18 |
forming or metal working processes, check
out custompart.net.
| | 00:21 |
This is a great resource for all types of
great information.
| | 00:23 |
Scroll though their section on sheet metal
forming, and you have all types of great
| | 00:27 |
information you can reference and learn
about.
| | 00:30 |
Not only do they cover sheet metal
forming, but they also cover the tooling,
| | 00:34 |
the processes.
Even roll forming, spinning, you name it,
| | 00:39 |
they have it.
Definitely worth the read.
| | 00:43 |
For free files to download, you can
download into your assembly.
| | 00:45 |
Not only sheet metal parts, but also all
types of parts designed in solid works, as
| | 00:50 |
well as other CAD softwares, check out
grabcad.com.
| | 00:53 |
Click on their Community tab, click on
Home, and you can see all types of files
| | 00:56 |
that we can download for free and use in
your designs.
| | 01:00 |
And finally, take a look at
3dcontentcentral.
| | 01:02 |
This has got a wealth of information and
many downloadable files from both motor
| | 01:06 |
suppliers, cylinder manufacturers, pins,
gears, bearings.
| | 01:10 |
You name it, they've got it.
All types of files they can use, download
| | 01:14 |
into your design and it saves you a lot of
time without having to go back and create
| | 01:17 |
these files making.
We can just log in, download the file and
| | 01:20 |
use it in your assembly.
Again, thank you for watching and good
| | 01:24 |
luck with your designs.
| | 01:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
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Bonus VideosLaser cutting| 00:00 |
Today, we're here at Fabcorp Precision
Sheet Metal and Manufacturing.
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It's a local manufacturer of sheet metal
parts based in Orange county California.
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Today, we're going to be looking at the
laser.
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And behind me, we have it set up to cut
this part right here.
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it's about eighth an inch thick and solid
steel.
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And let's go ahead and cut a part.
Laser cutting machines are extremely
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versatile and can cut a variety of
materials.
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This machine is a 4 kW machine.
It can cut 1 inch thick steel.
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It can also cut stainless steel, aluminum,
copper, and many other materials.
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Wood and plastic can also be cut, as well
as glass.
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By focusing light into a small area, the
material melts and a stream of assist gas
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cuts through the material.
Typically, nitrogen or oxygen are used
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depending upon the material to be cut.
The key benefit of using lasers is there's
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really no tooling and very minimal set up.
The process is simple.
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First, we need to generate a 2D CAD file.
The file formats we can use are .dwg,
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.dxf, .ai, .svg, or (INAUDIBLE) just about
any other vector format out there we can
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work with.
Secondly, we need to take that 2D file and
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import it into the laser software to
generate G code that drives the machine.
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Finally, we need to load both the program
and the material, make sure we've got the
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correct gas as well as the correct nozzle
in the machine.
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The laser makes it easy to quickly develop
and cut parts, and allows you as a
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designer to design without limits.
Also lasers excel at cutting parts that
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have free form curves and odd size
radiuses.
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These can be trouble for most other
processes, but easy for a laser.
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Here's an example of some parts that can
be cut with a laser.
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We can cut from very thin gauge steel
parts, to aluminium, to stainless steel,
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intricate sheet metal parts, to heavy
gauge steel structural parts, all the way
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up to 3 quarter inch thick steel plate.
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| Shear| 00:00 |
(SOUND).
So, we're standing in front of a
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mechanical shearer.
This is basically a large paper cutter for
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sheet metal material.
This can cut 10 foot across by about 48
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inches deep.
I'm going to bring this material in, slide
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it up against the back gauge.
Now, I can adjust the back gauge and the,
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the length of my cut here by moving this
either forward or backwards, and then
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inching out to size.
When I'm ready, I'm going to slide the
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material in, step on the pedal (SOUND),
and shear the material.
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On the back of the machine, you can see
the material gets sheared off, slides down
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a little ramp, and into a bin.
From the side, we see we slide it up
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against the back edge, and then shear off
the material.
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My final piece, cut to size, and ready to
go.
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| Break forming| 00:00 |
Okay, we're standing in front of a press
break.
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This is a 6 foot machine, and we're
going to get set up to do a bend.
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We've got a couple of bending dies.
This is a lower die, this is an upper die.
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And these go together in the machine, so,
they actually do the bend.
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We actually have a, a larger one already
set up in the machine here.
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And we're ready to bend some parts.
Alright.
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So, I'm going to change the flange
dimension here.
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So, I'm going to go into the cycle start,
click on the Flange Dimension, click on
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1.5, Enter, and we're ready to bend.
>> To design efficiently, try to keep your
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bends the same, and with matching flange
lengths to avoid having to set up multiple
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sets of tooling with different back edges.
Also consider the bend radius.
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The standard tools come in 030, 060, 090,
eighth inch, quarter inch, 3 8ths inch, et cetera.
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Try to design using these standard tools
to avoid custom tooling that can add cost
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and lead time to your parts.
You can see, we can stage multiple bends
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one after another on a part.
So, I can do the first bend with the same tool.
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Put the same part around, and do a series
of bends all using the same tooling, which
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is different back edge lengths.
Many times in SolidWorks, you can design
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parts that are very hard to build in the
real world.
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For example, if you see the lower dye in
the video, the flange needs to extend past
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the center of the top dye and touch the
top of the V groove on the back section of
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the tool.
As a general rule of thumb, we want to
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have a minimum flange length of four times
the material thickness.
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To switch our brake tooling, what we need
to do is use the Allen wrench, release the
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tool, and come in with a bottom die.
Go ahead and release the lower tool, swap
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that out, and we can grab our next set of
tooling.
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To set up a break, what we need to do is
select the correct sized tooling for the job.
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First, we need to add the lower die in and
then tighten it down.
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Secondly, we bring in the upper die and
then bring down the press break to put a
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little pressure on the upper die while we
tighten it down.
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Once it's ready to go, we then adjust our
back edge and our bend angle to make the part.
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There are many different types of tools we
can use in press break dyes, here is an
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example of just a few.
Many times, when designing in SolidWorks,
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we can design parts that really are hard
to build in the real world.
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For instance, if you make a hole too close
to a bend, the material can pull into the
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bend region and cause a part to deform
outside of what we'd expect.
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You can see in these videos here, we have
some holes that have been pulled out of
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round, and the material has been pulled
into that bend region.
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A part like this, you can see we have a
really thin section on the top that even
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though it was formed, you can see it
actually warped a little bit when it was
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being processed.
In the case of this part here, you can see
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the material actually deforms a little
bit, because the bend release is not
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adequate to allow the bend to fully
complete.
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Keep these things in mind when you're
designing parts, that you need to make
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sure you have adequate bend relief.
You keep your holes and features far
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enough away from the bend regions, so, you
don't have any pulled material.
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And if you're working with any hardware,
the hardware has a minimum distance from
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the edge, so that you don't have holes
that are pulled out of round or deformed.
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In this part here, you can see that the
bend relief did not fully extend past the
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bend area.
The bend effected region and we have some
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pulling of the material.
Also, think about how your part will be processed.
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A part like this can be extremely hard to
manufacture, because you have a flange
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that actually interferes with the interior
flange, when the part was built.
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Just makes things much harder.
It's going to drive up cost and lead time
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on your part.
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| Turret punch press| 00:00 |
I'm standing in front of a CNC Turret
punch press today, and in front of me is
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the job we're actually getting set up to
run.
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You can see the part here is cut out with
a series of different punches as they move
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around the job.
Here's an example of one of the punches.
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It's rectangular cut out, and that's used
right here to cut this hole here, as well
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as this one over here.
You can see, we place it here.
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This is a little bit longer punch and it's
used to do this prefere around the outside
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of the part.
And you can see that, that fits right into
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this hole.
The side of the part to cut this thing around.
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What this machine really is an overpriced
hole punch.
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As it turns it has 30 different tools in
her and it can go around and index to any
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one of the tools as it, as it cycles
throughout the part.
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Punching the different holes throughout
the job.
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We have auto index, which allows this,
this punch here to rotate to any degree or
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angle we want as we progress through the
part.
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In this job here, it's only using zero and
90 degrees.
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But we can, we can set this at any angle
we want.
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We also have a few other tools here.
This is an example of a cluster punch.
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It's not used in this job here, but it has
a series of eight punches and it has a
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corresponding die at the bottom that those
punches actually fit through.
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So when this in the machine, the two fit
together, this comes together, and punches
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the part out.
(NOISE) Here's a really simple example of
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a two-hole punch.
One small hole punch here, with a bottom
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die, these two come together like this,
and it cuts through the material.
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This material here is fairly thin.
In this machine you can do up to about a
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quarter inch thick, in material.
Loading tools for the turret can take a
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little while.
First off, each tool needs to have a
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carrier that gets loaded into the machine.
A tool gets loaded into the carrier first,
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then tightened down into the carrier,
followed by adding a stripper plate to the
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top that allows the material to be
released from the punch when it cuts
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through into the lower die.
The stripper plates are based upon the
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size of the tool and you can see the
stripper plate here in orange.
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That will be placed on top of the punch in
just a second.
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Grab the stripper, place it on top, and
give it a little smack to hold it down.
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We then grab that tool, and move it over
to the machine.
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The tools can be very heavy, and slippery,
so you have to be careful.
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First things first, let's flip the tool
over.
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Get a good grip on it with a rag, so we
can place it into the auto index station
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on the machine.
The auto index station allows the tool to
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rotate to any angle we want, when we're
cutting this part.
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(NOISE) Pick up the tool, carry it over to
the machine, drop it in its holder, and
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make sure that it seats and flush with the
lower tools.
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Give it a little twist, and allow the tool
to drop.
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Now, we need to tighten that tool down,
and add the lower die.
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And we should be good to go to start
cutting our part.
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Before material can be cut on the turret,
it needs to be cut to size.
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The blank sides need to be loaded in the
machine.
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And set to a stop on the side of the
machine.
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Once you're ready, close the clamps, grab
the material and we're ready to start
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cutting the part.
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| Welding| 00:02 |
There's three types of welding typically
used in a Sheet Metal company.
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MIG, TIG and Spot Welding.
MIG welding allows for quick fabrication
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and thicker parts.
The MIG welder's filler material is a wire
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that's fed through the handle and makes
quick work of fabricating the parts.
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There's also an assist gas that flows
through the handle and keeps oxygen away
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from the weld zone.
So that you have a nice clean weld with
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less splatter.
Spot welding is great for joining flat
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surfaces, and it is quick and easy.
The welder passes high amounts of energy
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across the electrodes and the materials
melt together.
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There's no filler material on a spot
welder.
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TIG welding is slower, however offers
ultimate control and is perfect for
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intricate parts.
The filler material is hand-fitted into
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the welds, so lots of skills required to
make good welds.
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Taking a look at some welds, you can see
from the video, that the weld around the
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periphery of this is a TIG weld.
It's a very small weld and it's very intricate.
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The weld on top is a bit bigger and is a
MIG Weld.
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It's much faster, kind of does produce a
little bit rougher weld.
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| Deburring| 00:01 |
There are many processes in a sheet metal
shop that produce sharp edges or burrs on parts.
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Secondly, many of the parts require a
cosmetic finish, like line draining or jitterbugging.
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There are four key tools used in the shop
to de-burr and finish parts.
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The first is the tumbler.
A tumbler is a mass finishing device that
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can finish multiple parts at the same time
very quickly.
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The media comes in a variety of sizes and
grits depending on the part size and the
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tumbler used.
Small parts use small media and small tumblers.
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And we have a larger tumblers as well with
bigger parts and bigger media.
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There's plastic media, ceramic media, and
it comes in all types of grits and sizes
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and shapes.
The larger tumblers allow us to tumble
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larger parts, as well as use larger rocks
and heavy duty machines.
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The hand grinder is primarily used to
remove the burr that's left where the
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laser starts and stops to cut.
This little burr can be quickly removed
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with a little hand grinder, and quickly
processed through the parts.
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We can do one at a time, or a whole stack.
The jitter bug or random of it's standard
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can quickly remove scratches that have
been added to the part through the
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manufacturing process.
And produces a nice even surface against
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quick to do.
We can even use it to remove any sharp
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edges that might be remaining on the part.
Different finishes can be produced on the
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parts depending upon the sand paper used
in the center.
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Using a line grainer, or a wide belt
sander, we can quickly add, a grained
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surface to the top and bottom of our part.
We can load the material through the
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machine, and we can run the part multiple
times through the machine to get the
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desired finish we want.
The sanding belts come in a variety of
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grits, to get the desired finish we're
looking for.
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The final parts have a uniform line grain
surface that's very cosmetic.
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You can find it on kitchen appliances and
many electronic enclosures.
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| Hardware| 00:01 |
Hardware comes in all shapes and sizes.
From nuts to bolts to washers.
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However, most of the hardware used in
sheet metal parts is captive.
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It needs to be inserted into a sheet metal
part with a hydraulic press.
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Most of this hardware is produced by a
company called PEM.
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PEM fasteners produces a full lineup of
captive hardware including nuts,
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standoffs, threaded studs, panel screws,
and so on.
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There's other companies also, like
Spyraflo and SouthCo, who produce captive
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bearings, thumb screws and panel hardware.
To install the hardware, we need a
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hydraulic press.
(SOUND) We simply load the piece of
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hardware, place the part on top, step on
the foot pedal and activate the press.
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This press here is pushing, about 2,000
pounds.
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However, this press can push up to about
12,000 pounds to install heavy duty hardware.
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(SOUND) It's quick and easy work.
(SOUND) Just load the hardware, place the
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part and actuate the press.
Pin fasteners are provided in almost every
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size and configuration you can think of,
Have small 256 screws all the way up to
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half inch hardware.
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| Computer numerical control (CNC)| 00:01 |
(SOUND) CNC are computer numeric
controlled milling and turning machines
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allow the shop to produce a wide variety
of parts.
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Some of these are stand alone machine
parts, while others support the sheet
| | 00:09 |
metal operation by reaming holes adding in
pockets or finishing secondary operations.
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Once you load the tools in the CNC
machine, load the program, the machine
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takes care of most of the operation.
You'll also have operations like reaming
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holes that can be done manually on a
regular mill or lathe.
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The shop also has a CNC Lathe for doing
turned and threaded parts.
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This machine can produce parts up to eight
inches in diameter.
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Both the CNC Mill and the CNC Lathe, as
well as the Manual Mill Lathe are great
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support equipment for the sheet metal
operations.
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