Bolt/Nut/Thread Generator

greg_wood

  

I was playing around with trying to make a bolt on my 3d printer and came up with template of sorts for making both Bolts and Nuts. 

This is effectively a screw generator for METRIC sizes. 

It might work for IMPERIAL but I have not tried. 

I'm not an engineer and most of this was done with just a few hours of research on the web. For those of you who maybe know a bit more than me fell free to correct any terminology I may have wrong.

To use; duplicate the parts studio, and edit the values for "Whole Word" variables only. The variables that are not whole word are used in calculations and/or may contain calculations. Editing them will most likely break things.

I developed this to create and print nuts and bolts on my 3D printer. As such the Tolerances have to be much greater than real machined threads. The bolts and nuts I have produced with this work with a machined thread checker I purchased from Home Depot. I have not  tried to create a machined nut or bolt as i don't have the equipment.

Below are the values that should be edited along with a brief description of what  the value represents.

Tolerance: The oversize/undersize of the threads.

WrenchSize: The size of the wrench the head will fit.

HeadDepth: The depth or height of the head.

ThreadLength: The distance the shaft protrudes out of the head.

Diameter: The diameter of the shaft.

Pitch: The distance between threads

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9b2d8e3ceaaa017089530828/w/c9d2c49a76958495e6a55ee7 

henry_feldman

Nice.

philip_thomas

This is very cool!

adrian_trace

I like this. I tried to suggest that OS provide a library system for peramterize parts. Looks like we do it ourselves or wade through the online parts. I've take a copy ( best  compliment!) and tweaked it a bit to give more realistic chamfer.

See it at https://cad.onshape.com/documents/1ad23a33342bff8f643010b7/w/6760e27dffcb0b79bf00708b/e/cc7ad52df3807e51693f78a3

There is a "feature" in the bolt thread that i have proposed an update unless you beat me to it!

I haven't fully tested it so have fun!!

For metric bolts there are standard ratios so picking a  bolt size(diam) drives the head size and gives 2 thread pitch options... then you get to choose the length.

Michel_Storms

Genius, this helps me with modelling bolts AND understanding how Onshape’s parametric system works.

Thanks for sharing!

joseph_schmoe

I know this is an old post, but I figured I would share. I did some terrible things to your project! Much of your math I had no idea on what it was all about so I left it alone. I did go in and manually fudge some sketches while trying to understand this, but everything was done with no research. The variables in my version all work, and this is what I use for 3D printing nut and bolts.

If you are interested …

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/4fba2377b5ba1259beed2d7b/w/85a33540b953b113046ceb1a/e/e5062c8f6a97c6044f02ab79?renderMode=0&rightPanel=variableTablePanel&uiState=67378766f7bd374931e9f4df