I am recreating a shape in Solidworks that was originally created out of angle iron. The angle iron is bent into a rectangular shape. It does this using stamped out cuts on the base of the angle iron (so it doesn't buckle), with the bend happening on the respective upright (see attached pictures). Can anyone offer some instructions on how to go about recreating this? I am new to sheet metal and can't seem to find any good tutorials or instructions for this type of bend on google/youtube.
Looks like a weldment really. I have constructed these in the past, just don't (personally) like the large radius from the manual bends. A weldment will cut and notch the corners in construction of course depending on the selection or corner treatments. Using sheet metal tools will likely add additional notching because of the larger radius at the corners. The size is really controlled by the corner notches and of course your ability to actually fold them as I can't tell the actual thickness.
So, it looks like a sheet metal print won't show the actual contruction, a weldment won't either. I'll watch this thread as I'm likely to learn something from future posts or corrections to my assumptions or practices.
Weldments was the first step I took. However, due to constraints there is a minimum value I can use for the radius corner (1.5", length of each arm on the angle iron) which is unacceptably large. Sheet metal, as I have learned so far has the ability to create the notching AND allows you to unfold a piece of work like this so that you can see the stamped out cuts on the angle iron BEFORE its bent (much easier for the metal shop to create such pieces). However, I am not familiar enough with sheet metal to fully understand how to make this part.
Daniel,
Seems it can be done by the addition of a unfold and fold operation. I modeled it quickly and no doubt the bend deductions or allowance is wrong but this may help you. The file is 2012. The 'flatten' operation would occur with the suppresion of the 'unsupressme' feature. In the picture below at the bottom it shows the part with only the 'hand' bends supressed.
Let me know if this helps.
Yes. That is a big help! Thank you for your assistance.
Daniel,
Seems it can be done by the addition of a unfold and fold operation. I modeled it quickly and no doubt the bend deductions or allowance is wrong but this may help you. The file is 2012. The 'flatten' operation would occur with the suppresion of the 'unsupressme' feature. In the picture below at the bottom it shows the part with only the 'hand' bends supressed.
Let me know if this helps.