Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_1_Casing Design
Project: Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_1_Casing Design.
Introduction
Sheet Metal is metal formed by an industrial process into thin, flat pieces and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Sheetmetal is a comprehensive cold working process for metal sheets usually below 6mm, including shearing, punching/ cutting/ folding, riveting, splicing, etc.
In the Sheet Metal application, we can create uniform thickness sheet metal parts using basic features such as flanges, tabs, and jags. We can also do close corners, cutout, and stiffening features.
Process
The sheet metal casing has been designed with the above flow chart process. While designing the casing the default thickness, bend radius, relief depth, and relief width value are set to 1mm.
Tab - The Tab feature creates a base feature by extruding a sketch along a vector by a thickness value, or adds material to the planar face.
Tab
Normal Cutout - The normal cutout feature cuts the material by projecting a sketch onto the model and then cutting perpendicular to the faces intersected by the projection.
Normal Cutout
Bend - This feature is used to bend sheet metal as per the required shape. To perform this operation, we have to select the face and sketch for bending.
Bend 1
Bend 2
Bend 3
Bend 4
Flange - The Flange feature adds a flat flange at an angle to the planar face and adds a bend between the two. While creating flange we have to set different parameters such as length of the flange, its angle, length reference (Inside, Outside and Web), inset (Material Inside, Material Outside and Bent Outside). Other parameters like Bend Radius, Bend Relief, and Neutral factor are also needed to be considered.
Flange 1
Flange 2
Break Corner - It creates Rounds or chamfers in a sharp corner of a tab or a flange.
Break Corner
Unbend - This command is used to unbend the sheet metal. The punching operation can be performed only by unbending the sheet metal.
Unbend 1
Unbend 2
Unbend 3
Unbend 4
Unbend 5
Unbend 6
Hole - This feature adds a hole to one or more solid bodies in a part or assembly with options for counterbore, countersink, or threaded.
Hole
Dimple - This feature is used to lift an area of the model inside a sketch that simulates a stamping tool. The Dimple command makes an indentation in the sheet metal part, using a sketched section as its outline.
Dimple
Bead - Bead is another punch tool used to create embosses over the sheet metal body w.r.t. the sketch created in the specific plane.
Bead
Mirror - This feature is used to copy features across planes.
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Rebend - Rebend feature is used to get the original bend shape after performing operations like a dimple, bead, etc. It's a tool to get the flanges of the sheet metal body into its original position that flattened with unbend tool to create some some complex structure on the sheet metal body.
Rebend 1
Rebend 2
Rebend 3
Rebend 4
Rebend 5
Rebend 6
Flat Pattern - This feature is used to create an automatically flattened version of sheet metal parts and prepare the model for the manufacturing process. This flat pattern remains the last feature in the model tree. A flat pattern ensures the manufacturability of components.
Flat Pattern
Drafting - It is possible to create a 2D drawing from a 3D model using the NX Drafting application. With the 3D model opened in NX, go to application than Drafting, this disables the sheet metal application and starts the drafting application.
Drafting 1
Drafting 2
Isometric View
Top View
Front View
Bottom View
Conclusion
By designing this casing, we have understood and learnt different tools such as Tab, Flange, Dimple, Bending, Unbending, Hole and Flat Pattern on Siemens NX CAD. The dimensions as provided were followed during the designing of casing on software.