Filling irregular corners with weld; overlap groove welds with fillet welds

[j_berry]

Using Inventor Professional 2013

In the attached assembly, I would like to fill the four corners (see Figure 1) with weld to make one smooth bead around the perimeter of the end cap rather than using fillet weld to lay down four linear beads along the edges. I accomplished this with a groove weld (see Figure 2). However, problems occurred (pasted below) when I attempt to weld this piece to a surface.

Error message:

"   Create Weld Feature: problems encountered while executing this command.
     example.iam: Errors occurred during update
       Fillet Weld 3: Could not build this Fillet Weld feature
         The attempted operation had problems trimming and discarding faces. Try with different inputs."

When I had the four original fillet weld beads, I could fillet weld this part to a surface no problem (see Figure 3). When I switched it to a groove weld to get the desired corner appearance, I get errors. I tried to mess around with the tick boxes in the groove weld dialog box to try to fix the problem but nothing helped.

Ultimately, my problem can be solved if I could simply fill the corner gaps without using the groove weld command. This would eliminate the errors associated with fillet welding over groove welds.

Let me know if the attached files do not work. This is my first time uploading an assembly and its associated part files.

Figure 1: Corner with fillet welds (need to fill that gap)

Figure 2: Corner with groove weld (gap filled)

Figure 3: Fillet welded (concave) to plate. Still need those corners filled.

[harco]

You could try putting a fillet preparation on the end cap.

This allows the faces to chain giving a smooth weld.

See image

[j_berry]

Thank you for the reply. It filled the corners and allowed a fillet weld to the plate, but gaps appear in the cocave weld to the plate.

[Larron.Fritz5HADW]

Hi guys... I'm curious if anyone found a solution to this one... I have a similar example of preferring to represent a rounded profile on fillet welds when transitioning corners.  I understand the need within inventor to create smooth profiles to get smoothly offset surfaces yet I am unable to figure our how to do so within the weld prep environment for edges that need to be rounded near it's mating orthogonal faces.  Example picture attached. 

Is there a way to reference the normal faces with offset or variable fillet command?  I can vary the entire length of the edge and even get the variable radius fillet command to create itself, but even that variable radius option has sharp edges that cannot then be selected as a separate feature to apply fillets to it's hard edges.  Second pic attached.

The weld bead will fail every time I try any combination of trying to smooth out the corners.  Any thoughts?

[JDMather]

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@Larron.Fritz5HADW wrote:

...  Any thoughts?

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Thought 1 - Attach your design here so that others can experiment with the actual design.

Thought 2 - Is the modeled weld bead actually needed, or will a weld symbol suffice (just like we commonly do for thread features)?

Thought 3 - If the weld bead is needed (for weight calculations or aesthetics or some other reason) and nobody here can figure out a technique using the Weld tools, then simply model the geometry in the same way you would model any other geometry.

[Larron.Fritz5HADW]

Thanks so much JD.

1.)  I would attach the model, but everything internal is proprietary.  When I find time, I'll upload a test piece with those particular features modeled.

2.) The weld bead is indeed required to have all edges smooth welded with no seams, gaps, or sharp edges.  Everything must be truly smooth.

3.) -1 for productivity on Autodesk if that is the only solution.  I believe that approach would also loose some of the intelligence built into the accounting behind the scenes like you mention.  Is anyone using weld bead geometry to drive robotic welding?  If so, I would think those right angles would cause some potential trouble.

Thanks so much for your time and input!