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Convert Bent Rubber Seal to Sheet Metal For Relief Cuts

Question asked by Jason Henke on May 5, 2009
Latest reply on Mar 1, 2010 by Jason Henke

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OK. I have this rubber seal that I would like to convert to sheet metal to be able to unroll or flatten it to be able to cut the relief cuts. The cuts are going to be in the unrolled state then rolled into the shape of the seal. I cannot for the life of me figure out a way to do this. I figured using the sheet metal feature would be my best bet but I'm open for suggestions. If anyone has any advice or tips on a good way to do this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

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Seal.zip363.2 KB

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Deepak Gupta May 6, 2009 7:40 AM
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Jason,

you need the relief cuts on the tube portion or flat area of the profile.
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Jason Henke May 6, 2009 1:12 PM
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Yeah I figured that much. The flat area most definitely. My question is, is how would you convert that to a sheet metal part to be able to roll and unroll the seal. Meaning with the seal rolled you'll be able to see the relief cuts just a little and with it unrolled it should look like little triangles cut out of the flat part. I wouldn't consider myself a novice at the sheet metal features but I've messed around with this for a few hours and couldn't come up with anything good to do what I wanted. So I figured I would ask the experts.
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- Edward Sine @ Jason Henke on May 12, 2009 3:05 AM
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  Jason, I would not try to use Sheet Metal. You can control this using your configurations. First off. This example is for concept only to show you how it can be done. This example is being done on the recently released ESP. So I also do not have Excel to view your table to control the spline. So I just eye balled the example attached just to show you concept and guide your intentions. Using (3) points to guide your spline which in turn is guiding your Sweep Feature you'll see it can be done on my attached file. Knowing your finished part by taking a measured length of your Spline line you can then change the dim for the straight length required for your drawing and notches if need be. To help control these guide points make sure they all stay positive or neg. since you will be using a min. amount of points to control your spline.
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  - Seal 4Jason.zip383.3 KB
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Jeff Mirisola May 6, 2009 1:31 PM
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SolidWorks won't be able to convert it/create it. It doesn't like compound curves in sheet metal. Actually, you *might* be able to create it, but it won't flatten.
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Jason Henke Mar 1, 2010 10:20 AM
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Well I finally got back to messing around with this part, and using the Deform feature I was able to accomplish what I wanted. To be honest, I've never used the Deform feature before and it worked out suprisingly very well. I've attached the file in case anyone wants to reverse engineer or at least take a peek at it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to try and figure this out.
Jason
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- Seal.SLDPRT.zip2.2 MB
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Convert Bent Rubber Seal to Sheet Metal For Relief Cuts

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