Sheet Metal Cylindrical Question

kent_henderson

I'm struggling with creation of sheet metal parts from cylindrical shapes. I create a solid, split the faces where I'd like seams, then convert to sheet metal. This offers a visual sheet metal part but no flat pattern and a red sheet metal feature in the tree. I can generally see where I'm uspetting Onshape and by changing tangents to rips in the bend table I get a buch of red modfied joint features to go along with the original red sheet metal feature, but flat patterns are generated. Rolled up in a folder called SPAM1 is another attempt at creating this sheet metal part. As you can see in SPAM1 I have similar problems and solutions to generate flat patterns. I abandoned SPAM1 because I didn't like the way my weld joint were turning out. And, I still have all the red features in my tree. Red in my design tree bothers me. It seems I'm fighting the software. Is there a better approach to this simple part.

In another twist, I need the SM in blue to be a different thickness that the SM in gray. I think if I can understand a better way to deal with my first paragragh, I can work around this.



https://cad.onshape.com/documents/687ede6be65a32c4cd5d97d0/w/495a8c7a2f8d866a76dcddf8/e/88cfc8cc70a4be9e1b2dc07e

romeograham

You'll need to change the permissions of your document so we can make a copy and try to help out.
[EDIT to add link to new document]
Here's a method to do this part - there are 5 parts, so this method requires 5 Sheet metal features.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/4bc6fb3d3bc72c372b654c48/w/1a55fb171363add36752f14d/e/957f86a7efb6f82bb430686a


Hope this helps.

kent_henderson

Sorry for failing to check the export button. Corrected that. Thanks for your help and suggestions. I just love the way Onshape takes a solid and turns it into sheet metal. Generally the seems end up exactly the way they should for manufacturing purposes so that's the way I approach it. Your multible sheet metal features approach works too. Some of the seams will need to be massaged (move face) to make yours manufacturable like where the orange cresent and gray tube meet. I'll experiment more with your suggestions Monday morning.

Weld! What ??? I've never seen that before and I'm sure exited to figure that out.

Thanks again for helping and sharing.