Advanced Sheet Metal Design Using NX Cad Challenge_6_Bracket

DESIGN OF SHEET METAL BRACKET BY NX-CAD

Aim:The main aim of this project is to design the sheet metal of bracket by using sheet metal workbench within the NX-CAD software.

Introduction:Metals formed into thin pieces is known as sheet metal.They are formed from the forming process like bending, cutting, punching, embossing etc and made up from the materials like aluminium, copper, brass, titanium, galvanized steel etc.Each use for sheet metal requires a specific thickness or guage.A higher guage number indicates a thinner piece of material. These are used even from small light applications to large applications like in car bodies,airplane wings,medical tables,casing plates etc; because of their high durable strength,low in weight, cost effectiveness and even it is free from corrosion.

In this project,a sheet metal of bracket is designed.Actually sheet metal bracket is used for providing support to beams,pipes,railings etc.They are different brackets available or we can manufacture as per requirements.Here the sheet metal bracket is designed by using the NX-CAD software.NX is the computer aided software formerely known as unigraphics.Firstly it was introduce solid modeling, surface modeling features and later sheet metal metal application is also came into existence.It having several widely used sheet metal features like tab,flanges,corners,unbending,rebending etc and also it converts non sheet metal parts into valid sheet metals.By using this features,bracket can be designed accurately and also finally create the drafting for bracket by using drafting feature.

Design Methodlogy:

Design of sheet metal bracket involves a application of various features and several sketches are to be created.The detailed workflow on how to desgin the bracket is described below.

Features used for designing sheet metal bracket:

Sketch: Sketch creates the 2d drawing for which the model is to be designed.It consists of several sketch tools like line,rectangle,arc,spline etc.

Contour flange:It is used for extruding the sketch along the defined vector direction for non linear profiles.It consists of base as well as secondary contour flanges.

Normal cutout: It is used for cutting the material by projecting sketch onto the model and then cutting perpendicular to the faces intersected by the projection.

Break corner: Break corner is used to create the smooth faces at the edges in order to avoid the sharp edges.

Unbend:Unbend feature converts the bended model into original state model by selecting one of the stationary face and required bend faces.

Bead:Bead lifts the material along a contour of sketch that simulates a stamping tool.

Rebend:Rebend is used to revert the formed unbended model.

Hole:Hole feature is used for creating required holes at specified points like counterbored or countersink or threaded holes.

Description:

• First open the NX application from the start menu and select model workbench by changing its untis to millimeters system.
• Select sheet metal ribbon from the application tab.
• Create new sketch on XZ plane and draw the base sketch of bracket as per given dimensions.
• Exit from sketch.

• Create contour flange by selecting above sketch as section curve.
• Change thickness to 3mm and width 200mm.
• Click ok.

• Create the sketch on surface normal to XY plane.
• Draw the required sketch as per dimensions as shown below.
• Exit from sketch.

• Remove the selected portion by using normal cutout feature.
• Click ok.

• Rounded the four selected edges by using the break corner feature in order to remove sharp edges.
• Change radius to 25mm.

• Similarly apply break corner to the edge in between the two faces of radius 30mm.

• Similarly apply break corner to the outer corner edge of radius 60mm.

• Create new sketch on XY plane(Top plane).
• Draw the line as per dimensions with respect to origin.
• Exit from sketch.

• Unbend the sheet metal by selecting orange colour face as stationary face and bended faces as bend faces.

• Create the bead by selecting sketch line as section curve.
• Change bead parameters to 7mm and die radius as 5mm.

• Rebend the formed sheet metal by selecting all bend faces.

• Create the new sketch on surface normal to XY plane.
• create one point on above with respect to origin.
• Create another two points at below.while creating this points,dimensions is not require.Automatically it highlights arcs center points.so create points on that center points.
• Ckeck once the distance between these two points as 35mm.
• Exit from sketch.

• Select the hole feature and select 3 points as position points.
• Change diameter to 20mm.
• Click ok.

• Once the holes creation is completed,the final formed sheet metal bracket will be like this.

• Create the flat pattern view for bracket of determining blank design parameters which is used for drafting.
• After that select the drafting ribbon from the application tab.
• Automatically it opens a sheet dialogue box and select the sheet size as per requirement.
• Select base view tab feature and select the flat pattern view as model view.
• Select the suitable scaling ratio based on the model view.

• Once the drafting is completed,click on the save button to save the entire wok.

Feature tree of Bracket part navigator:

Different views of Sheet metal bracket:

Front view

Top view

Right view

Isometric view

Final model image

Drawing sheet images:

1.Image with flat pattern view-

2.Image with proper standard views:

Conclusion:

Sheet metal bracket can be designed perfectly by using the sheet metal features within the NX-CAD software and also gain a knowledge on how to design the various types of sheet metal formations.

THANK YOU