pic: GUS Team 228's Prototype Sheet Metal 6WD Chassis

[mplanchard]

When sheet metal shop mentors donate their time, there are some simple steps you can take in SolidWorks to help reduce the time to form/stamp the part.

Ask what the standard tools/punches are in their turrets. This way you can design around their standard setup -you can add these to your SolidWorks Design Library under Sheet Metal folder. Then you can drag and drop these shapes from the library. There are standard sheetmetal library features there now to help.

Ask what bend radius to use. By defaut, SolidWorks uses a K factor = .5, this is the neutral axis, but in reality, the K factor might be .44 on one machine and .47 on another.

Ask about materials - what does the sheet metal shop have as scrap ahead of time. Use SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress to compare different material properties such as density, tensile strength, young modules in one big table - plus you get to see the resulting carbon footprint.

Turn on Sheet Metal tab, right click any tab in the command manager. The first feature in a sheet metal part is a Base Flange. Work in 3D, then make the Flatten state in the drawing. If you plot the drawing in the flatten state, try to size, trace it on paper, you will get an idea of what your part will look like. Cut out and score the paper at the dashed bend lines.


This tip comes from John V Neun, if you dont have access to a sheet metal shop, you can print the flatten state of the part to scale, trace with a sharpie on your sheet metal and cut out with the proper tin snips- wear safety glasses.

At 2010 you can create multi body sheet metal parts, the cut list will create a seperate representation for each body. You can also now use Mirror part in an assemby for sheet metal parts and my favorite new feature, based on the sheet metal vendor I used to work with, you can export a sheet metal body directly to .dxf or ,dwg format. From the part, right-click on the Flat Pattern feature and click Export to dwg/dxf

I used sheet metal a great deal when I was designing robots - I learned alot by visiting the sheet metal shop often and working with the sheet metal vendor. Marie