Rolling a Flat Piece of Sheet Metal Into a 360 Degree Ring in NX9

[engdonkey]

Is there a way in NX9 to roll (bend) a thin flat rectangle into a ring? 360 degrees? Even 359.999 degrees? Anything? I have not used the Sheet Metal Package at all. Trying it, but nothing seems to work? Not very intuitive. Help if you can. Thanks.

 

[RAGudorf]

Contour Flange is your friend. See attached (rough).

Ryan

--
Ryan Gudorf
CAD/CAM Supervisor
Budde Sheet Metal Works, Inc.

Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1
Solid Edge V20
NX8.5.1.3
TC8.3 in Testing
6 GB RAM, nVIDIA Quadro FX4800

 

[JohnRBaker]

You can do it using the 'Contour Flange' feature in NX Sheet Metal, as I did in the attached example. You can edit the 'gap' in the hoop by changing the value of the expression 'Gap', and as long as you don't approach the value of the Modeling 'Distance Tolerance' you should be OK.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Ryan, not to take anything away from your example, since you did virtually the same thing I did, however, your model would look much better if you were working with View -> Perspective toggled ON. It's shapes like this which results in images which when looked at, they just don't feel right. Remember, even a one-eyed man sees in perspective.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[engdonkey]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It seems that you both are creating a cylinder from a circular line. That's not what I am after. I have a 50" long X 3" wide X .045" thick piece of sheet metal already modeled. That model needs to have the ends brought together (or very close, eg. 359.999 degrees) to form a ring with a diameter 50/pi = 15.915. The rolled ring needs to be parametrically linked to the flat stock (50" X 3" X .045"), so that if the flat stock model ever changes, the rolled ring will change accordingly. I'm struggling trying to see if I can somehow make it work using expressions right now, but, seems there should be a button that can roll a simple cylinder ??? Not complex. No stretching.

 

[looslib]

Sheet metal design is based on a press brake operation, not a rolling operation.
You can 'roll' in sheet metal, but you need to start with a small flat, then add the flange. In your case it would be a 359.9 degree bend.
Starting with the flat and then forming with the rolled and flat associative is hard to do. You may be able to get something with expressions driving the 'bend radius' from asn expression linked to the flat length.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[engdonkey]

Ahhh. So, the edge of my flat rectangular blank can NOT be the edge to roll from? I would have to add a line a few thousandths (.002" ?) in from the edge creating a "bend line"? That .002" would not roll, it would be a tiny flat in my cylinder and would not align perfectly with the end being rolled 359.9 degrees, which probably is fine.

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, here's the closest (see attached model) that I can come to doing precisely what you're asking for. That is taking a long flat strip of metal and then rolling it up into a hoop or ring. Unfortunately the closest that I can get to a complete circle is around 359°. This will allow you to use a piece of metal approximately 35 inches long or longer (width is irrelevant). Anything less than that and the angle will have to decrease as well. However, if you stayed around a length of 50 inches then you could tighten the angle up to 359.3° and at 100 inches you could go up to 359.6°. Note that this model was created by first creating a flat Sheet Metal 'Tab' of the desired length, width and thickness. I then added a Sheet Metal 'Bend' feature (NOT one of the 'Flange' features) to the model placing it at exactly the mid-point along the base strip of metal (the 'Tab'). After accepting the default 90° bend, you go to the Expression editor and replace the default 'Bend Radius' value with the formula '(Length/PI())/2' where 'Length' is the long dimension of the original 'Tab' feature. Then edit the 'Bend Angle' to be 359°, hit OK and you're good to go. To see what's happening, simply suppress the 'SB Bend' feature to see the original flat 'Tab'.

Anyway, I hope this helps. There are a couple of other approaches that could also work but they would involve creating multiple solid bodies. The method described above comes closest to what you're looking for although the other methods, all of which would utilize a 'Contour Flange', you could get closer to a full 360° circle but it would never be exactly that.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MFDO]

Check if this work for you, (basic construction method)

Just change the sketch "SHEET" with your new values (used mm template and therefore add "in" after the values.)


Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[MFDO]

Forgot to mention, the “SHEET” Sketch could be an external part, and the “RING” sketch could be driven through “Inter-part Expressions”, as the way you wanted.

Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[engdonkey]

Thanks to everyone for helping out on this. I tried all of your suggestions and they worked to varying degrees. The most disappointing was the "BEND" feature. Everything looked great with that method until I tested the "parametric-ness" by changing the assembly component's blank size, that's where it failed. I was able to link it so that it DID update the blank size into my assembly, but, the most concerning thing was that the bend function went haywire. It did NOT update the size of the ring. Ultimately, I found a way to make it parametric throughout the assembly using expressions and staying away from the sheet metal functions.

 

[engdonkey]

For future reference, how do you attach files to these posts? Those were extremely helpful files that were attached.

 

[JohnRBaker]

At the bottom of the 'window' where you enter your post, there's a link where you can upload and link a file to your post.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cowski]

And if you want to embed a picture in your post, someone on the CATIA forum wrote up a good FAQ on how to do that:

http://www.eng-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=1810

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

For imbedding images into a post, I use 'Photobucket' as my on-line repository of images (unfortunately not everyone seems to be able to see them as some companies have blocked 'Photobucket', for whatever reason).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[engdonkey]

Thanks. That was easy. Just testing.

 

[NeilMGW]

It's not mathematically possible to roll a sheet, no matter how thin, and have no stretching. What are your tolerances?