Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad - Casing Design
TITLE OF THE PROJECT: Advanced sheet metal design using Siemens NX cad - Casing Design.
OBJECTIVE: To design a Sheet metal Casing and create a draft of it using Siemens NX Sheet metal application.
INTRODUCTION
Sheet metal is metal formed by an industrial process into thin, flat pieces. Sheet metal is one of the fundamental forms used in metal working, and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Countless everyday objects are fabricated from sheet metal. Thicknesses can vary significantly; extremely thin sheets are considered foil or leaf, and pieces thicker than 6 mm (0.25 in) are considered plate steel or "structural steel".
Sheet metal is available in flat pieces or coiled strips. The coils are formed by running a continuous sheet of metal through a roll sitter.
NX Sheet Metal: Creating fast, accurate flat patterns is the goal of any organization that manufactures products which contain sheet metal parts. NX Sheet Metal provides a set of tools within the NX design environment that allows for simple and fast design of sheet metal parts, dependent on their material and manufacturing process, the most common of which is straight brake sheet metal forming.
With NX Sheet Metal, formed and unformed representations of the parts are created closely following the industry workflows and best practices for bending calculations, tooling, and sheet metal features. The value lies in improving quality and reducing cost of sheet metal parts by producing an accurate sheet metal pattern as the correct input for part manufacture, whether internally or to a supplier.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY
Design methodology is explained by the following flow chart as follows;
DESCRIPTION
Sketch:- It is the basic of any design.
Tab:- It is used to create base feature of a sheet metal by extruding a sketch along a vector by a thickness value. Here a rectangular tab of global thickness 3mm is created.
Bend:- It modifies the model by bending material on one side of a sketch line, adding a bend betwen the two sides. Here two bends were created at the lines drawn on the tab at a distasnce of 10mm from the upper and lower edge of the tab.
Hole:- It adds a hole to one or more solid bodies in a part or an asembly with options for counterbored, countersunk and threaded. Here a screw clearance hole is created at the extreme position of the four flanges of screw size M2 with a fit of Normal (H13).
Flange:- It is used to create an extended part (bend) of a sheet metal, there are total four flanges created in the casing.
Unbend:- This feature is used to unbend the adjacent bends and flatten them. Here the base face is taken as stationary face.
Rebend:- It is used to rebend the corners that were bent before along with any features added after the unbend feature.
Dimple:- It lifts an area of the model inside a sketch that simulates a stamping tool, here it is created in the middle of the base tab.
Bead:- It lifts material along the contour of a sketch that simulates a stamping tool, it is used for giving strength to the sheet metal. There are total four beads created around the dimple.
Normal cutout:- It cuts the material by projecting a sketch onto the model and then cutting perpendicular to the faces intersected by the projection. Here a rectangular shaped cutout was created onto the tab.
IMAGES
Following are the images of casing in different views;
Front view
Back view
Top view
Bottom view
Left side view
Right side view
Isometric view
DRAFT (Drawing sheet)
CONCLUSION
By performing this task, I have learned how to use simple features like tab, flange, break corner, dimple, bend, bead, rebend and unbend by creating design of a casing.