Cardboard Engineering using Sheet Metal Tool

john_doubleday

Has anyone used the Sheet Metal Tool to design for Cardboard Engineering?

awk

Not really exactly what you're asking for (I think) but I have a (slow moving) project I've been working on at https://cad.onshape.com/documents/7a394ff491dd3c42917748fc/w/a46f338bc4dd0fa296f56692/e/7e02af042a02d302b9b27528

The intention is to build an enclosure for the Creality Ender 3 printer - I prototyped it this weekend using some 1/8th inch foam board which has worked reasonably well - at least to show me the deficiencies before cutting any actual acrylic material.

The enclosure is designed using in-context references (from Creality's open source STEP models) and surface extrudes, then constructing a sheet metal model to give me the flat pattern pieces that I can then nest and prep for simple plotting and cutting.

(Unlike most of my colleagues I'm not a master CAD practitioner - others might have alternative proposals to achieving this :-)

john_mcclary

Yes, you can use sheet-metal tools for any material type that folds.

You should adjust the bend radius and k factor to be much lower, because cardboard doesnt stretch, but rather collapses. 

john_doubleday

OK....thanks John. and AWK....this has huge potential for school projects....Flat Pack ....ANYTHING. I will investigate further.....Maybe the tool should be renamed....FOLDING MODEL