PWM Wires and Multiple Tubing

[Chris Herold]

Hey,
I took over the project for the Inventor Award for my team. I think I am pretty far and I know how to wire the robot, etc. But now I have problems with the PWMs and other cables that consist of several wires. How do I do them best?
The same problem applies for our tubing. Since our robot uses a lot of pneumatics in the claw, we have six tubes together going up in a spiral, how could I build this without spending hours on making every one?

By the way, I looked for a thread like this, but couldn't find one!

Thanks in advance

Chris

[Aceanuu]

I was gonna ask this too.... Also curious. The ribbon cabling system doesn't seem very customizable.

[Trav-O]

yeah I need help with this too. Id really apprecaite any help

[Dan Zollman]

I'm not up to date on ribbon cables, but that's what you need to use for PWM cables. Try Inventor Help or the "Routed Systems: Getting Started" guide.
I think you would have to model your own connectors for the PWM wires; then place pins in the three holes in the connector.

Regarding the six twisted tubes (in Inventor, hoses), the key is to think outside of the box. How can you constrain the tubes to that shape? How can you simulate that spiral shape? One idea is to make some sort surface or solid using the Coil tool, use that surface/solid to define your hose route points, then hide the surface or solid. (Of course, that assumes that the spiral setup can be approximated by one or more straight coils.)

If getting the right shape looks impossible, then you could try approximating it or just model straight tubes instead of coils. When I'm doing something like this, a model that conveys the design intent (i.e. "the tubes follow a general path from here to there") is satisfactory to me. Others, of course, would say that you need to model it accurately, down to every detail.

[Chris Herold]

Alright thanks, I think I will go with an approximation then.

[Aceanuu]

Yeah, incase anyone is curious since its late, the process is pretty easy once you figure it out. Took me a little bit.

Basically, you have to make your own custom connector and then make your own custom definition for the ribbon cable. When you place the pins on your ribbon cable connector, its best (or its required, I can't quite figure out, but I always used the Pin Group) to place them with the Pin Group placement since it puts the pins in a line like the ribbon needs them to be. Then, you have to "author" the connector. So click the "Connector Author" button in teh parts panel (its like the last one or the last in one of the sections). You select which face to be the outward (the one with the pins coming out of them basically) then you select the pin group (and which way the pins are from the first pin in the pin group). Lastly, after this little window it says you can now publish the part, so go to Tools -> Publish Part. This will publish it to your library so you can add it. From there, just add it to your assembly, click the Create Ribbon cable in the harness section of the assembly and then just click the connectors (assuming you've made the ribbon cable in the wiring library right, but thats easy to figure out, basically diameter of the wires * number of wires for width, diamter of wires for the pitch, and the rest is easy)

Sorry for the lateness, but I didn't have a lot of time to check the forums... two back to back 4:45 am mornings following a week of 2-3am mornings on school days will do that to you...