I have a quick question, what setting should I put for bending allowance for metal that get's bend on a brake.
I have a quick question, what setting should I put for bending allowance for metal that get's bend on a brake.
Hi Jorge,
What do you mean "on a brake",
The bend allowance will depend on the material thickness and the bend radius.
Or you can use K factor.
This could all depend on the machine that you will be producing the bend on. You may have to amend the bend allowance table to suit your bending machine. but the chances are that the default settings in Solidworks will be find.
I work in a sheet metal factory. We use .4 as our K-factor
We bend any were from 10ga to 1/4 in., So you think .4 is good. So on the edge flange should i
"check/un-check" the use default radius.
"check/un-check" k-factor
how to place the settings
20 ga to .375 we use the 0.40 k-factor
Jorge,, Since you said "we bend" I'm assuming you are to fab this in the shop you work at. I'll bet the brake guys there have a pretty good idea of what to use. I've never run into a brake operator that didn't have formulas, charts, calculators and the like. Talk to them since they know the tooling and the "ins and outs". If you were to send this part (model) out for fabrication they are not going to care what you used. They will make it right (or should) for their process. Don't confuse anyone with a flat pattern.
For doing this in house, (cutting, punching, bending or whatever) and no one has a clue I suggest going to SheetMetalGuy.com and use their online calculator. Or download BDCalc (from somewhere-I found this to be excellent) You can get bend deduction, allowance, k-factor. I have always use bend deduction. Need to use something I can understand and seek my teeth into. I developed my own calculator (G-Basic (DOS)) based off an empirical formula devoped by Lockeed (I think) about 35 (oops 25) years ago and had been using that until it wouldn't work with windows.
I could go on and on. Hope I didn't confuse or bore you.
Thank you for the input Dennis, much appreciated.
Dennis brought up a good point here Jorge - about the flat pattern... Best practice for sheet metal if you make the parts in house then definitely do the flat pattern, if you out source your fabrication then "Never" send them a flat pattern, just overall dimensions etc... they may use different calculations/bending dies etc...
I have sent pieces out to be bent where the guys bending asked for a flat pattern. Being 'cautious' of exactly your point I did provide it but noted in larger than normal text and in bold that; "This drawing is being provided for clarity of intent only and that 'co. name' is responsible for final part matching drawing 'X' including all dimensions and fit to adjoining part." I provided a sample part as well. It was probably worded a little fancier after my editing crew checked it but you get the idea.
That is a good note for the drawings.
The reason I do a flat patter is for pre-cutting the material which is out source and bending in house. Since our tolerances in our industry is 1/8 +/-. In addition I was noticing that the overall width of the part was very different depending the K-Factor. So if I wanted to pre-cut "X" amount of pieces per sheet out on a water jet. I could determined how many parts per sheet.
Again thank you for all the input.
20 ga to .375 we use the 0.40 k-factor