I have recently been working a lot with 7 gauge steel parts but they are quite small for that size material. Many features that work well in the models come out deformed in real life after being bent. Is there a way to have solidworks show these possible deformities before I release the parts to be manufactured?
Thanks!
Also, consider relief cuts in the bend region to eliminate the distortion.
If your talking about a hole that lies within the inside radius, you can do it via Unfold, Cut-Extrude, Fold.
If it's outside the radius but within the die opening, it's a turkey shoot and SW won't tell you.
This is the technique I use to add relief cuts which eliminate the distortion OP describes.
Hi,
I haven't had much time to experiment with the methods you provided, but the holes I am putting into my parts are close to bends rather than in/over the bend radii. Thank you for your suggestions though, if I can get it to work I will let you know!
No.
As shown above, SW will display deformation within a bend.
But past the form line, as shown below for a hole that's close to the bend action, SW doesn't compute this.
But with the weakness caused by the hole, real life plastic flow will occur and the hole won't be circular.
If you can't add these post bend, then perhaps an experiment with elliptic pre-bend holes (long axis parallel to the bend) may help.
Another avenue is to change the hole to a small pilot hole so that its edge is far enough away from the bend action that it doesn't deform (appreciably) and then post bend drill to size.
Kevin
This makes sense and answers my question! I will see about a post-bend hole. However the limitations on the manufacturing end are more from a time and money stand-point rather than a process. We are currently having the holes lasered out with the parts, if we switch, then we will have to send them to our machine shop post-bend.
Thank you again!
Make a test part.
Laser cut a bigger hole if needed.
Or oval.
If you really wanted to get an idea of what was going on you could probably do a non linear simulation and look at the deformation in the hole.
If you don't want to do a secondary operation (laser or mill) and distortion is acceptable I would add a note in the drawing (arrow pointing at hole edge near the bend tangent) stating that distortion is acceptable...
Showing this deformity seems to not have a lot of value. You could determine a formula to indicate distortion and create a sensor built into a "start part" to warn you. If I remember correctly the rule of thumb we used at a previous employer was minimum 8x material thickness from edge of hole to centerline of bend. I do think this depends on the bottom die opening size however.
Might not be what you were looking for, but thought I'd mention the possibility.