Week 8 - Challenge 2 - Switch Bezel Design

Aim

Create the Switch Bezel Plastic component through the given Class - A surface

Objective

The objective of the project is to design the switch bezel and to do a draft analysis for it by creating the required tooling direction with the help of Bisecting method

Introduction

The control panel bezel is the frame part of the window switch that holds its switch covers and buttons into a place. moulding is the method used to manufacture the plastic trims of an automotive by most OEM's hence by considering the manufacturing consideration the switch bezel is designed.

Procedure For Creating the Switch Bezel

CLASS A SURFACE

TOOLING AXIS

1. considering the ejection from the cavity of the mound after manufacturing the interior trim(switch bezel) must have the nominal 3- degree draft angle
2. Hence the tooling direction is created by considering the above factor and bisecting method is used.
3. The base surface of the class - A was extracted and a point at the centre is created and an axis system was inserted to the point with the current feature is disabled.
4. Using intersection along yz plane is created and the intersection line is disassemble
5. Then bisecting lines with the two inclined lines were drawn

Now the intersection along the xz plane but on one side we don't have iclined lines so the centre point is used to extrude a line along the z- direction and gave a measurement of 5 degree (Tentatively).

With these two lines from sketches 1 and 2, the bisecting line is created and published as tooling axis( tooling direction)

MAIN TOOLING AXIS

DRAFT ANALYSIS

CLASS B SURFACE

1. For creating the class - B surface the required surface except the offset surface have been extracted and then untrimmed all the surface.

2. Then all the surfaces have been extrapolated to get intersections between them.

3. Since the thickness of the Switch bezel is 2.5 mm the B- Surface was offset to 2.5mm and the required trim operations must be carried out.

4. Finally, the required corners have been filleted

CLASS C SURFACE

1. For the creation of class B surface, first the boundary of the class A surface is extracted using Multiple extract feature.
2. After this sweep option is used to create the sweep along the tooling axis direction.

CLASS A+C

Class A surface and the class C surface are then joined together to get desired shape

Then trim Class A+C surface to class B surface

CLASS A+B+C SURFACE

Desired closed surface is created

SOLID BODY

After ensuring that the surfaces formed are completely closed, the closed surface feature is used to create the solid mould of the switch bezel

THICKNESS

DRAFT ANALYSIS (SOLID BODY)

When the design is complete, draft analysis is done on the component.

After draft analysis is done we can observe that the green colour shows that the drafted walls of the switch bezel are above 2.9 degrees which is a permissible cirteria to manufacture in injection moulding.

Detailed tree structure for the creation of switch bezel is represented below

TREE STRUCTURE

Conclusion

1. Class A, Class B and Class C surfaces are created following standards of automotive industry using Catia V5 software.

2. Draft analysis was performed on the switch bezel and it was observed that draft was under permissible limit for the manufacturing of the component using injection moulding process.