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Sheet Metal Bend K Factor

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Mumawalde

Mechanical
Jun 24, 2010
33
I am trying to understand how IV uses the K Factor in sheet metal bending. If I create a bent "angle iron" shape, the bend line does not show up where I'd expect it to, and there seems to be no setting I can change to move the bend line. I am assuming the K Factor is used to affect this, but no matter what K Factor I use, the bend line is always in the same place. I really would like to have no compensation in my flat patterns.

 
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The kfactor is used to calculate the flat pattern dimensions based on the material and machinery you use to create that bend... When formed metal must contract (squish) on the inside radius and expand (stretch) on the outside radius. The kfactor accounts for the change in material size based on expansion/contraction of the metal during forming.
 
I was refering to the bend line in the .ipt flat pattern, which I would assume should be the same as the bend line in the .idw.

At any rate, I got the bend line location to change as expected. There must be a bug of some sort in Inventor, as I was doing exactly what technical support was suggesting, but nothing was changing, then a day later upon restarting Inventor and trying a couple more times it all of a sudden worked (I didn't do anything differently).

Thanks for the help.
 
(I didn't do anything differently).

The first step whenever getting unexpected results is to make sure you have the latest Service Packs installed.
2nd step (1st step if you already have SP) is to reboot and see if you can reproduce. Did support have you reboot in your earlier test?
 
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