3d drawing of bent metal

Step one:  Admission the Sail Metal Workspace

Fusion 360 has several different workspaces that requite you access to different sets of tools. The 1 you are most familiar with is the Model workspace in which you can create sketches and three-dimensional geometries. You might also employ the Render or Drawing workspaces. The tools for designing canvass metal parts are in a recently-added workspace, the Canvas Metallic workspace.

To access the Sheet Metal workspace, only click the workspace button in the upper-left corner of the window.

Pace 2: Create a Base Flange

A big office of our time in the Sheet Metallic workspace volition be spent adding flanges to the design. Flanges are basically sheet metal surfaces that are connected to other surfaces by bends in the material. To start our design, we will need to add together a base flange. This flat slice of metal will be the starting point of our pattern and we volition be adding other surfaces coming off the base flange to build the sheet metal part.

Creating a base of operations flange starts with creating a sketch just similar you would do in the Model workspace. This tin can exist a simple rectangle or a more complex shape with cutouts, holes, or sides at irregular angles. For this tutorial, we will start with a sketch that volition class the back of the servo subclass. The geometry of this base flange comes from the dimensions of the HS-5065MG servo.

To create a base flange, select the Flange command from the Create bill of fare in the ribbon. This is a command nosotros volition be using quite a flake for this tutorial.

Then, using the Flange command, select the sketch profile for the role. Your selection will announced in the flange dialog box. Yous can also select a material to use for the base flange, a bailiwick we will accost further in the next step. After clicking OK , Fusion 360 will generate a flat torso based on your sketch.

Step 3: Ready upward your Design Rules

You lot may have noticed that we never specified a thickness for the base of operations flange. I of the pregnant differences between the Sheet Metal workspace and the Model workspace you are likely most familiar with is that when working with sheet metal, because we are using a sheet metal raw fabric, many of the geometrical attributes of the part are determined by the material selected, rather than having the user directly input the model geometry. In other words, unlike using extrude in the Model workspace, where you would specify the thickness by setting an extrusion altitude, in the Sheet Metal workspace, the thickness of the cloth is determined by the Pattern Rules.

The Blueprint Rules basically specify the properties of the sheet metallic that will be used to make your part. This includes the thickness of the metallic, along with some other useful properties like how sharp the bends in the material will be.

To adjust the pattern rules for the function, navigate to Sheet Metallic Rules in the Modify section of the ribbon.

In the Sheet Metal Rules dialog box, you will observe the material yous selected for the base flange. If yous hover the mouse over the name of the material, a little pencil icon will appear. Click this pencil icon to begin editing the canvass metal rules.

Then you lot will be presented with a second dialog box where you can edit, among other things, the thickness of the material. Sheet metallic thickness is typically specified as a gauge, rather than a direct measurement every bit information technology is presented in Fusion 360. So, to figure out the thickness you want to use for the fabric, it is useful to refer to a chart of sheet metallic specifications. Your canvas metal manufacturer or supplier should have a document detailing the availability of sheet metal gauges in different materials. For this projection, I am using 18 gauge aluminum 5052, which is one.02mm thick.

One time you are done, click Relieve . You will meet the thickness of the base flange update.

Step 4:  Add Another Flange (Add together a Bend)

Now that we have a base flange, the side by side step is to add more flanges to the blueprint. Flanges are but canvass metal surfaces continued to the base flange past bends in the material. You tin can picture this by imagining the procedure of making a sheet metal component. When the part is manufactured, the entire flat sheet metal shape will be bent by hand or by CNC bending tools to create the finished class. In Fusion 360, we will exist able to toggle betwixt the folded and flat pattern.

First, select the border to which the adjacent flange will connect. This can be any straight border in the design. In the example role, I will be selecting the edge that will fold underneath the servo. Then, in the ribbon, select the Flange command from the Create card only similar we did when creating the base flange.

Then, in the Flange dialog box, input the length of the flange. This length is the altitude between the edge you selected and the end of the new sheet metal surface.

Y'all volition notice that Fusion 360 automatically places a bend in the fabric, rather than creating a perpendicular surface like you would get when using the extrude control in the Model workspace. There are a couple options for the Curve Position . The default, and nigh common, pick is an Within position. With an within bend position, the overall dimensions of the base flange stay the same; the flange is placed every bit if you extruded another surface from the base of operations flange, only the software places a bend betwixt the flanges equally previously stated. The second most mutual option is the Outside position. When using this pick, the new flange is placed off the end of the base flange. So, the overall dimensions of the base flange will increase in size by the thickness of the material.

You can echo this procedure for however many flanges your blueprint requires.

Step 5:  Unfold the Blueprint

In the Sheet Metal workspace, you can fold and unfold the blueprint in order to see the shape of raw sheet metal that volition need to be cutting in social club to manufacture the part, and also to do more design work equally we accept been doing. Unfolding the pattern is also extremely important for adding additional geometries to the part, like holes, as we will see in the next footstep.

To unfold the design, select Unfold from the Modify carte du jour.

The Unfold dialog box has two fields. The first designates the Stationary Entity . This is the surface that will remain stationary when the sheet metal part is unfolded. In well-nigh cases, you will want to select the base of operations flange. Next you select the bends that volition be unfolded in the Bends field. You do non necessarily need to unfold all the bends in your design, but I detect it nigh useful to practice and so.

Pressing OK will produce a flat pattern from your sheet metal role that shows the shape that will need to exist cut out of the sheet metal textile itself in club to produce your part.

If you are following along with the example project this post, yous will want to leave the design unfolded for at present. Simply, when information technology comes time to re-fold the design later on, in guild to return information technology to its 3-dimensional shape, simply click the Refold button on the far right side of the ribbon.

Stride half-dozen:  Add Holes

Aside from seeing what our sheet metallic part will look similar in its raw form cutting from a sheet of textile, unfolding the design is likewise extremely important for adding additional features to the design, like holes or cutouts.

Accept a expect at this example of an issue that could occur if you tried to add things like holes without first unfolding the pattern. Allow'due south imaging you had a sheet metallic part with a flange at a 45° angle to the base flange. Now yous want a pigsty in that flange. You might use the same arroyo you would in the Model workflow, cartoon a circumvolve on one of the origin sides and extruding information technology through the fabric.

Take a look beneath at what that extrude does to the design once it is unfolded. Yous tin run into that this hole is not perpendicular to the cloth. Rather, information technology runs at an angle to the superlative and bottom surfaces. This creates a serious issue for manufacturing the role because, in addition to the fact that this features is likely not design the style you intended, it is incommunicable to industry on most sheet metal cut tools.

So, to avoid this issue, it is always best to unfold the design. Then, once the material is a flat sheet, you can add holes using sketching/extrusion, or the hole tool. This guarantees that the holes run perpendicular to the surfaces of the canvass metallic and evidence up correctly when the pattern is re-folded.

Once the pattern is re-folded, yous will come across the holes in the correct places on the function.

Step vii: Create a Drawing

When it comes time to get your sheet metal part fabricated, it will be extremely useful to generate a drawing of the flattened part with a list of bends your manufacturer volition need to perform. This mode, your manufacturer volition have all the information they will need to cutting out the correct shape from the raw cloth, and they volition too know where to place each curve, plus the angle for each bend.

To create this drawing, switch from the Sail Metallic workspace we have been using throughout this tutorial so far, and instead switch to the Drawing Workspace . When yous hover over the Drawing workspace, select the option to create a drawing From Design .

And then you will be presented with a dialog box. The first field in the dialog, Representation , has ii options: folded model and flat pattern. In this case, we will want to choose Flat Pattern .

A new tab volition open in Fusion 360 with the Drawing workspace. Just like with a cartoon of a model yous might have created in the by, outset by placing a base view for the drawing. In this case, the base view is of the flat metal sheet used to form the finished part. You can, and should, add dimensions to this drawing just similar you would with other types of drawings.

One very of import slice of data we will add to the drawing for working with sail metal is a tabular array of bends needed to class the concluding shape of the role. To insert a table into the drawing, click on the Table particular inside the Tables menu in the ribbon.

The user-friendly feature is that Fusion 360 will automatically generate a table of bends in the design. Y'all will notice that the table will automatically contain a row for each bend in the pattern. Additionally, on the cartoon base view, you will notice that Fusion 360 automatically places a number side by side to each curve to place that bend with the corresponding row in the tabular array.

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Source: https://toglefritz.com/design-sheet-metal-parts-in-fusion-360/

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