creating a detent - is there a mate I can use?

les_green

Hi all, I've not been using Onshape for long, but am really enjoying using it, although not without a few moments of confusion!

However what I want to try and do now may be a bit too complicated, and want to ask for advice on either how to do it, or alternate means to achieve the same result. I am trying to make a race sim gearbox, and for that I need a an axial movement of a shaft, with also some limited rotational of the shaft along its long axis. I am able to replicate both the fore and aft movement plus the rotation movements using the mates with limits. However the shaft is required to have three fore and aft detent positions, as well as four rotational ones. 

For the axial detents, the shaft will have three radiused grooves turned in it, and the intention is to have a bearing that is sprung to drop into the grooves. The mate is therefore one that requires the bearing circumferential face to run along the outer face of the shaft, including the grooves, so multiple surfaces. I hope the picture below is clear!

Is that possible with Onshape?

Cheers

Les

wayne_sauder

 You will need to create a continuous dummy surface. There might be another workaround if you research some of the work @john_mcclary has done on complicated motion, (I have not wrapped my head around all his tricks). 

robert_scott_jr_

Would a Tangent Mate work? - Scotty

john_mcclary

That sounds like a lot of complicated motions. It may not be easy, especially for a beginner.

Unless you absolutely need to animate that motion, I would suggest you just set named positions for each position.
Named Positions (onshape.com)

les_green

Thanks, will take a look

Les 

les_green

robert_scott_jr_ said:

Would a Tangent Mate work? - Scotty

Just tried it, seems not unfortunately. Will keep trying the other ideas though, thanks for the answer!