Week 10 - Challenge 3 - Door Trim Lower with Engineering Features

DOOR TRIM LOWER

Aim:

To Create the Door trim lower component through the given Class-A surface.

Objective:

 The main aim of this challenge is to create a solid body of 'Door Trim Lower' with the help of the closed surface method by using the 'Generative shape design' workbench in CATIA V5. Performing the 'Draft Analysis' on the solid part body of the Door trim.

Overview:
Initially, we need to offset the given Door Trim class A surface in the inner direction to the required thickness (here the thickness is 2.5mm). After that, we need to close the patches on the offset surface of the bumper, the patches are formed due to the fillets on the Class A surface. Once all the patches are closed properly join them together to make a proper class B surface and now sweep the boundary of the class  A surface to trim with the class B surface to make a closed body. By using the closed body command in the Prat workbench we can get the solid body from the closed surface of the Door Trim. Now, I created the Heat stakes and Locators by considering all the design parameters. After creating all the B-side features on the solid part body of the door trim, I performed a draft analysis for it to check whether all the surfaces are drafted properly or not (The draft angle for the plastic component is 0.5deg to 3deg).

Draft

The draft is the amount of taper for moulded or cast parts perpendicular to the parting. line. Draft angles are a design consideration that makes it much easier for a part to release cleanly from a mould. A draft angle is calculated as a degree measurement (or, less often, an inch or millimetre measurement) from the vertical axis of a mould, and it helps account for thermoplastic shrinkage, a practical reality of the injection moulding process for most materials.

Draft angles are generally a requirement of injection moulding design (though there are a select few soft materials, like nylon, that can get away with draft angles of zero). The draft should be a part of the design for manufacture, and all stakeholders and contributors should be aware of its need at the outset of the design process. This includes product designers, design engineers etc and this allows considerations for design requirements to be taken into account. Any draft is always better than no draft.

TOOLING AXIS:

To create the tooling axis, I extracted a surface from class A and created a point in the middle of the surface by using the point command and created a line at that point through the x-axis. Now, I performed a draft analysis check from that line whether the created tooling axis is in the correct position or not. If in the draft, analysis check the surface highlighted with green colour on both sides of the surface the tooling axis is in the correct position and direction. 

DRAFT ANALYSIS FOR CLASS A SURFACE:

We do perform the draft analysis check for class A surface before we make solid and creation of B-side features. Initially I align the compass to the tooling axis and I gave a 3deg draft angle for the green colour in the colour bar. If the surface is highlighted in green colour the draft angle is given properly for class A surface. If the class A surface is not highlighted fully in green colour, that might be the reason for the draft angle of the class A surface.

CLASS B SURFACE:

To create the class B surface, offset the class A surface inside as per our thickness requirement (here the thickness is 2.5mm, so I offset the class A to 2.5mm inside). Once the offset is created, we can observe some patches on the offset surface by taking the boundary for the offset surface, those patches are formed due to the fillets on the class A surface. We need to cover those patches with the help of the multi-section surfaces command by extracting the patch boundaries. Once all the patches on the offset are covered properly join all the patches with the offset surface, to get the replicated surface of the class A surface. 

CLASS C SURFACE:

I used the sweep command to create the class C surface concerning the boundary of the class A surface. Initially, I extracted the boundary of the class A surface with tangent continuity, and I sweep the extracted boundary concerning the surface at 93deg (for draft angle) for 4mm to intersect properly with the class B surface. Once we sweep all the surface boundaries of class A, extrapolate the sweeped surfaces until both surfaces got intersect properly, and trim them to remove extended extrapolated surfaces to get a proper sweep boundary throughout the entire surface, including the centre hole of the door trim. Now, join both class A and sweep boundary to get the complete class C surface. 

PART BODY:

To create the solid part body from the closed surface, I used the closed surface command in the part workbench.

CREATION OF LOCATORS:

To create the locators, I created a sketch on the body. After creating the sketch, I pad it 20mm in height and thicken it to 1.3mm and I drafted it with 0.5deg in the direction of the tooling axis. I gave 5mm of chamfer with 45deg of inclination and after I gave a fillet of 0.25mm radius.