Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_2_Box Assembly
TITLE OF THE PROJECT: Advanced sheet metal design using Siemens NX cad - Box Assembly.
OBJECTIVE: To design a box assembly and create a draft of it using Siemens NX Sheet metal application.
INTRODUCTION
Metal that has been processed industrially into thin, flat pieces is known as sheet metal. One of the basic materials used in metalworking is sheet metal, which can be bent and cut into a wide range of shapes. Sheet metal is used to create a huge variety of commonplace items. Very thin sheets are referred to as foil or leaf, while objects with a thickness more than 6 mm (0.25 in) are referred to as plate steel or "structural steel." Thicknesses can vary greatly.
There are flat pieces of sheet metal and coiled strips available. A continuous sheet of metal is fed through a roll sitter to create the coils.
Each company that develops products with sheet metal components wants to produce flat patterns quickly and precisely. NX Sheet Metal can help with this. Depending on the material and production process—the most popular of which is straight brake sheet metal forming—NX Sheet Metal offers a set of tools within the NX design environment that enable quick and easy design of sheet metal parts.
NX Sheet Metal closely adheres to industry processes and best practises for bending calculations, tooling, and sheet metal characteristics while creating formed and unformed representations of the parts. By creating an exact sheet metal pattern as the proper input for component fabrication, whether internally or to a third party, the value resides in improving quality and lowering the cost of sheet metal parts.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY
Design methodology is explained by the 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 tabs were created as the base of the top and bottom hinges as well as the base of the box.
Flange:- It is used to create an extended part (bend) of a sheet metal. There are total twelve flanges created in the box assembly.
Unbend:- This feature is used to unbend the adjacent bends and flatten them. Here it is used to create cut outs for the hinges.
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 three dimples are created,i.e., in the middle of the base and two at the sides of the box.
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 at the base.
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 to create the top and bottom hinges.
Mirror feature:- It copies a feature and mirrors it across a plane. Here the dimple on the side wall and beads on the bottom of the tab are created using this feature.
Hem flange:- It modifies the model by folding the edge of a sheet metal flange over onto itself for the purpose of safe handling or to increase edge stiffness. It is used to create flanges on the walls of the box, on the sides of the lid and also on the hinges.
Break corner:- It rounds or chamfers a sharp corner of a tab or flange. It is used in the tab created for hinge.
Closed corner:- It closes a corner where two adjacent flanges meet by extending the bends and flanges. It is used to close the gap between the flanges used to create the walls of the box.
Mirror body:- It copies a body and mirrors it across a plane. Box, lid and hinges are mirrored as a body using this command.
Unite:- It combines the volume of two or more bodies into a single body. Two box and lid parts are combined using this feature to create a single body.
Flat pattern:- It creates a flat pattern feature from the formed sheet metal part. Separate flat patterns are created for the box, lid and the hinges.
Datum plane:- It creates a datum plane used to construct other features. It is created to form the lid.
Datum coordinate system:- It creates a datum coordinate system used to construct other features. It is created as a reference to mirror the bodies and the features.
IMAGES
Following are the images of box assembly in different views;
CONCLUSION
By performing this task, I have learned how to use features like tab, flange, break corner, closed corner, dimple, hem flange, bead, rebend, datum plane, datum coordinate system (Datum CSYS), flat pattern, mirror feature, mirror body, unite, normal cutout and unbend by creating a box assembly.