Sheetmetal pierce

[PeterBrown]

Hola - Okay, I'm a total novice with sheemetal. What kind of feature do I need to construct (rip?) to put a rectangular hole in a sheetmetal part where three sides of the rectangle are cut and a tab is bent down on the fourth side at 90 degrees? The feature is in the middle of the sheetmetal, it's not an edge rip.

TIA

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[mpeterson]

Peter,

I think you can do that a couple ways. The method I prefer takes a little long,
but is probably closer to the actual end result.

One way is to make a very thin extrude cut around the 3 sides of your rectrangle
and then go back and make bend features for what ever your tab configuration is.
This way the bends will be closer to the actual forming of the part.

The other way is to use the Die type features and specify the three sides that
are to be removed (ripped). This way you get the rip feature and the forming of
your tab. That said you do need to create the die/punch part to apply to get
your rip and form, so on second thought maybe not any quicker. This method could
leave you a tab length that really is not possible and thus why I prefer the
other method. If this was a lance type part I would use the die/punch feature
since the material is going to stretch to what ever the form configuration is
(to limits of course).

Good luck,

Sincerely,
Mark A. Peterson
Sr Design Engineer
Igloo Products Corp
-

[BrentDrysdale]

Hi Peter,
Mark's suggestions would both work and in the way he describes. I would
usually use the 1st method as being quick and the closest to the real thing
in that it gives the length of the lancing. Like Mark, I would have to test
what the form method produced in terms of length.

There is a third method which does not require the small three side
perimeter cut and that is to first cut a rectangle and then add a flat wall
on the edge you want (default rip relief is what you want. You will have to
give the height of the wall and calculate this yourself but it does give the
closest to the way a lancing operation works.

The thing to bear in mind is that Sheetmetal is an application in ProE that
gives you special tools to make shapes. It does not mimic the real world
processes of making sheetmetal parts, except for the bend operation and even
then the constant thickness around the bend is not what happens either. All
that said it is useful for creating sheetmetal parts as opposed to modelling
them just in the standard solid or surface modeller.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Brent Drysdale
Senior Mechanical Designer
Tait Radio Communications
New Zealand
DDI +64 3 358 1093
www.taitradio.com