Challenge

Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_2_Box Assembly

HHimanshu Sharma21 Jul 2022

Box Assembly

Objective:

To design the Box in sheet metal using the NX CAD Software.

Introduction

In this Project, I have designed the assembly of Box, a sheet metal part by using NX-CAD. I have explained all the tools and features which are used in this sheet metal part modeling such as tab, flanges, hem flange, bend, bead, mirror, etc. Basically, NX-CAD software can be used for both solid modeling as well as sheet metal modeling but the features which it provides for sheet metal are very handy and feasible to use for the design of complex sheet metal parts.

The sheet metal design tools within NX allow companies to apply defaults – based on both industry and company best practices – to the values used in the creation of sheet metal parts. For example, bend radii and neutral factor values can be set to commonly used values to encourage re-use and save design time. Folded and unfolded views of sheet metal components can be used in both the 3D environment as well as downstream in 2D documentation and for manufacturing.

Design Methodology

Features:

Sketch: This is the basic or common feature use in any type of modeling but it plays a vital role as it is the foundation of our part model. NX-CAD provides a number of sketch entities and tools for creating sketches such as line, arc, rectangle, spline, circle, ellipse, polygon etc. In the case of our box, I have used sketch entities like rectangles, circles.

Tab: This feature is used to create a solid body by extruding the sketch along a vector by given thickness value or it is also used to add material along a planar face.

Flange: This adds a flange along a face at an angle we can change the angle value by providing a bend between a face, this is a very handy feature to create flanges as it propel the bend values which are required to create a flange.

Normal Cut-Out: This feature cuts or removes material from an existing solid body by projecting the sketch along with the model and then cuts perpendicular the faces which intersects the projecting sketch.

Closed Corner: It is used to close corners when two adjacent flanges meet at a corner, it does by extending the bends and flanges to a closed corner can be formed.

Mirror Feature: This is used to mirror the selected features along a plane by selecting the mirror plane from the existing planes, it is a handy tool to replicate our features which are created once and saves time and effort required to recreate that same feature.

Unbend: It is used to create a flat sheet of our sheet metal model, it does by unbending the bend and material adjacent to the bend.

Rebend: It again restores the bends which were given to the model previously along with any other features added to the model after unbend.

Bead: It lifts material along a contour of the sketch thereby acting like a stamping tool.

Dimple: It is similar to that of the Bead feature this also lifts the area of the model inside the sketch and acts like a stamping tool.

Hem flange: This feature modifies the edge of the sheet metal by folding it over or onto itself by the creation a flange, it is done for the purpose of safe handling or to provide more stiffness to the sheet metal part.