Week 8 - Challenge 2 - Base Bracket Design

BASE BRACKET DESIGN

Introduction

Class A surface

This is the styling surface which provides the aesthetic features of a component. A designer starts the component design from a class A surface.

Class B surface

Class B surface is obtained by offsetting the class A surface by the component thickness value. This B surface contains all the engineering features of the component.

Class C surface

Class C surface is created along the tooling direction of the component and connects the class A and class B surfaces.

Tooling Axis

Tooling axis is the direction in which the 2 halves of a mould (core and cavity) opens or closes, or the direction in which the part is released from the mould.

Process

Creating a tooling axis

1. A tooling axis should be created such that, the surfaces of the part must clear the tooling axis and the elements of the component can be created in that direction.
2. For creating the tooling axis, we first intersect the component with the YZ plane only since a few elements of the component cannot be manufactured in the XZ plane.
3. From the intersected surface we draw two lines from the boundary of the surfaces that we find close to not fulfilling the tooling axis.
4. We then bisect these lines and get the tooling axis for the bracket.

Intersection with YZ plane

Creating two lines and bisecting them to get the tooling axis

Draft analysis

Creating Class B surface

1. We extract each face of the bracket except the fillets.
2. The extracted surfaces are offset by the thickness of the bracket i.e. 2.5mm.
3. The offset surfaces are then untrimed and extrapolated by 10mm and then trimmed with the other surfaces to form the shape of the bracket.
4. Finally the fillets are applied to the edges and the final B surface of the bracket is created.

Final B surface

Creating the Class C surface and final Bracket body

1. The boundary of the bracket and its elements such as hole are extracted.
2. The extracted boundaries are swept with draft direction which is the Tooling axis and with a draft angle of 3°
3. These swept surfaces are then joined with the class A surface
4. The joined surface is then trimmed with the class B surface to create the surface body of the Bracket
5. This surface body is then turned into a closed surface to make the final body of the Bracket.

Final C surface

C surface and A surface joined with the Join command

Final surface created by trimming the joined A and C surface with B surface

Closed body

Conclusion

Thus, the Bracket was designed using the class A surface to create the class B and C surfaces, to make the final body of the Bracket.