How does your (design) team window/pocket parts to reduce weight when time is tight? Do you use standardized parameters for the patterns?
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Paging the person who always posts the analysis showing that simply halving the wall thickness on a part (1/16’’ wall) leads to greater strength/stiffness than doing a lightening pattern on the thicker/heavier part (1/8’’ wall).
I think its @JamesCH95
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But if you still need to put a lightening pattern in a part, it takes a little set up and planning but I like to draw a triangle, or whatever lightening shape I’m using, maybe mirror it once at first to create a double triangle cutout, and then I do a linear pattern on my whole part and it repeats. It isnt too tedious except tweaking some dimensions on your initial cutout so that it patterns nicely X number of times across your whole part.
Use thinner material. For tubes it is always more mass:strength efficient to use thinner tubes.
If you cannot go thinner, but REALLY need to lose the weight, half-depth pockets or simplying milling/flycutting down the outside of the tube is better than punching in windows.
Album: https://imgur.com/a/JgE47hY
A good overview of 1x1 tubes, 1/8in wall cut to make them the same mass as the 1x1x1/16 tube.
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We did a good bit of sheet metal this year on the robot (as have we in past years) because I design with it full time at work, and as such, am familiar with it. We use SolidWorks (both at work and on the team) and just this year I discovered the vent tool that is a part of the SheetMetal tools in SolidWorks. Absolutely awesome IMO and has definitely saved me some time this year.
Also echoing the above when it comes to tubing especially. If you can, just run thinner tubing to save weight. There’s still times where pocketing can be beneficial (or maybe your team values the teaching opportunity and/or coolness factor), but running thinner tubing is definitely a quick and easy way to shave weight.
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Wow that vent tool is actually really useful for putting in a lightening pattern. You could just draw a pattern of diagonal lines and immediately create a whole triangular truss pattern. And its cool it shows you how much material you took out with the 100% flow rate meaning 100% of the material is gone.
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