Rob Jensen’s Blog » Creating A Tube With Normal To Surface End Cutoffs: Option 2
Creating A Tube With Normal To Surface End Cutoffs: Option 2
Sometimes it takes reading a blog post to generate another blog post. Hence, this post.
I had a user group member ask me this same question at a meeting. I got to see exactly what he was trying to do when Mike Puckett and I went on a customer visit. Then today, Anna posts a way to do this on her blog..! So I thought I’d give you another option to capture the same result.
First, I created my sketch profile and extruded it as a thin feature. Note: I have a .001in gap between the 2 lines so I can create a sheetmetal feature from the solid.
After I have my base shape, I created a sheetmetal feature out of it by going to Insert, SheetMetal, Bends
Once you have your sheetmetal feature created, you can sketch the profile you want to cut out and do a Cut Extrude. NOTE: I have “Nomal Cut” selected. This will give you the laser cut shape.
And there you have it. The final product.
The nice thing about this option, is if the shop comes up and says that they are going to saw cut the tube, you can just edit the cut feature and un-check the Normal Cut option and you have a straight cut.
5 Comments
1. Anna Wood replies at 2nd June 2009, 2:23 am :
Rob,
Excellent tip. Thanks for posting an alternate solution to the problem.
Cheers,
Anna
2. Dave Padelford replies at 3rd June 2009, 11:17 pm :
Rob,
Why not just create a sheet metal base flange from the sketch rather than thin extrude and then change to sheet metal finding the bends.
3. Rob replies at 8th July 2009, 12:45 am :
That is another option. Thanks for the tip Dave.
4. Ang replies at 27th July 2009, 6:30 am :
I tried this just now, but when I flatten the part when “normal cut” is unchecked, the flat pattern has an error. I guess sheet metal does not like the angled cut on the edges?
5. Rob replies at 30th July 2009, 1:02 am :
Hello Ang.
This was just to show how you could create the profile if you needed to laser cut the tube.
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