Week 9 - Challenge 2 - Switch Bezel Design

OBJECTIVE: To create the Switch Bezel Plastic component through the given Class-A surface. To begin with, the tooling axis for the given Class-A Surface should be created meeting the requirements of the draft angle and at the end perform the Draft analysis on the model.

Thickness of the component to be 2.5 mm.

Software Used:Catia v5

Steps involved while creating Switch Bezel component.

1. Creation of tooling direction.
2. Create class B surface.
3. Create class C surface.
4. Joined  B and C surface.
5. Final join all surfaces(A+B+C).
6. Create solid component .

Given:

Class-A Surface: Image of given class A surface:

i.Creation of tooling direction. 

1. 1. For the Ejection from the cavity of the mould after manufacturing the automotive interior trim (switch bezel) must have provide the nominal 3-degree draft angle.
   2. 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  then a point at the centre of surface is created and an axis system was inserted to the point with the current feature is disabled.
   4. Then, using project intersection along yz plane is created and the two inclined lines were drawn inside the positioned sketch.
   5. Then bisecting lines with the two inclined lines were drawn.
   6. Now the same procedure is done along the xz plane but on one side we don’t have inclined lines so the centre point is used to extrude a line along the z-direction and gave a measurement of 5 degrees .
   7. With the help of  two lines from sketches 1 and 2, the bisecting line(red color) is crated.
   8. And published as Tooling Axis(tooling direction) for the component.                                                         

The above steps shown in below images of tooling direction.

Create ii. ii.Create class B surface.

1. For the creation of  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 2.5mm the B-Surface was offset to 2.5 mm and the required trim operations must be carried out.
4. Finally, the required corners have been filleted to 12.5mm (15mm-2.5mm).because 15mm fillet value of the A-surface, 2.5mm is Thickness of the component .

 iii.Creation of C surface

1. The required outer edges of the A-Surface were extracted using Multiple Extract. Then for avoiding the patches the curve is smoothened using the Curve Smooth option.
2. Then by using the sweep command the surface was created with the following feature controls as required.

 iv.Joining surfaces A and C.

• Now the class – A and Class- C surfaces were joined together by removing the gaps in-between them with the help of extrapolation(tangent continuity) and Trim surface.

v.Final join all surfaces(A+B+C): The exact surface of the Switch bezel was trimmed from the above-resulted trim surface with the class-B surface.

   

vi.Create solid component .Defining the part body by using the Closed Surface command in Part Design, the component's solid body is created.

Draft Analysis :

1. First the class – A surface is checked before creating the Class –B&C surface and finally the solid body must be analysed. Both can be done by following the below procedures.
2. By changing the view mode to custom view parameters – Material mode then the feature draft analysis is enabled.
3. Then the compass was activated and placed with the tooling axis by dragging the red pointer and then locked it.
4. Then, by selecting the quick analysis mode, the nominal value will be 3 degrees and checked for the component's draft angle.
5. The green colour area shows that it satisfies the 3-degree draft angle.