@MintJulep
Yeah, I think my question is answered by the lack of answers--there's no clear formula that could be used to design this thing.
I'll follow your suggestion, although it's not quite that simple. Will require a little DOE to find the resultant force's relation to tolerances in each of...
Accuracy is not critical, but I need to design in enough extra force so the total tolerance range meets the minimum of 22N. But since I want to minimize the force, higher accuracy is preferable.
@BipolarMoment No, the space constraint (about 10mm available for length of beam) is way too tight to even get close. Anyway, I don't want to pick a sub-optimal design simply because calculations are complicated.
Strain energy methods might work, but would I need a very accurate stress-strain table to calculate the strain energy density? And I'm still not sure how to model the right angle bend in the beam.
I was wondering if an approximation like this would be valid, breaking up the beam into two...
This is 1mm thick steel, and I need a force of >=22N, which I want to minimize. I estimate I won't be able to do much more than 2mm of deflection before it yields, but the smaller the deflection, the bigger the I'll need to make the nominal force to maintain the 22N minimum. Some yielding is...
I'm considering the elimination of a coil spring by using the elasticity of a beam folded out of a sheet metal part.
A standard force calculation for an end-loaded cantilever beam can be done using P = -3EI/(δL^3), which for a rectangular beam is P = -Ebh^3/(4δL^3). This should be a pretty good...
