Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_5_Odd Shaped Enclosure
Project: Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_5_Odd Shaped Enclosure.
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.
This project is to create the enclosure, by creating the solid model and wrapping the sheet metal over the solid surface. Then we need to add the features to the wrapped sheet metal. This involves leveraging NX's sheet metal features, such as Extrude, Flange, Sheet Metal from Solid, Jog, Unbend, Bead, Hole, Rebend and Flat pattern to create the desired enclosure. Finally, a flat pattern has to be created to check the manufacturing feasibility of that product.
Process
The sheet metal Odd Shaped Enclosure has been designed with the below mentioned flow chart process.
Flow Chart
Extrude: In Siemens NX, extruding in sheet metal involves using the Extrude command to create solid bodies from sketches, with options for defining sheet metal properties and secondary features.
Base Sketch
Extrude
Sheet Metal from Solid: It builds a sheet metal model that takes its shapes from a collection of planar faces. This command is used to convert the solid body into a sheet metal body. After selecting the command and the solid body, we can also remove the edge sharpness by removing the material at these places.
Sheet Metal from Solid
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
Jog: This feature is used to create a bend by adding a tab or a recess, often with a specific height, to a sheet metal part. It typically involves creating a sketch on the face of the sheet metal and then using the jog command to extrude the sketch.
Sketch for Jog Creation
Jog
Unbend: This command is used to unbend the sheet metal. The punching operation can be performed only by unbending the sheet metal.
Unbend
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.
Sketch for Bead Creation
Bead
Hole: This feature adds a hole to one or more solid bodies in a part or assembly with options for counterbore, countersink, or threaded.
Sketch for Hole Creation
Hole
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
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.
Isometric View
Front View
Top View
Side View
Conclusion
By designing this Odd Shaped Enclosure, we have understood and learnt different tools such as Extrude, Flange, Sheet Metal from Solid, Jog, Unbend, Bead, Hole, Rebend and Flat pattern on Siemens NX CAD. The dimensions as provided were followed during the designing of Odd Shaped Enclosure on software.