Welding assistant for Fusion 360

[FusionChris]

Welded assemblies are quite common in manufacturing. There are some preparations needed to create a safe and rigid welding connection. An assistant in Fusion to create prepared parts for different types of welding connections and the connection itself would be a great thing for manufacturing and engineering.

Furthermore you need to clarify these welding connections in the technical drawing so here you need some welding symbols as well.

After the welding process is finished it is necessary to post machine your welded parts.

Just a few examples for different welds

Representation of a weld in a technical drawingExample for the preparation of a V-weld

Cheers

Chris

[Anonymous]

see also https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/create-welds-automatically/idc-p/8418383#M3638...

[Anonymous]

When I need to represent a weld I create a square bead that runs in the groove of the two parts planned to be welded and make it a new component in itself. Then once the bead has been put into position I use the 'Chamfer' tool and take off 50% of the square bead at the necessary angle and it creates the representation of a weld. I also created relief patterns for the appearances that look like weld beads and apply them to the weld bead components I created for the model at hand and it looks like a real weld and can be hidden or removed at ease for reasons such as creating 2D drawings that don't require the weld bead material.

[Garret_H]

Yes please! Personally 99% of the mechanical design work I have done in my life involves welding components. 

The lack of even weld symbols is baffling...

@Anonymous your link to what Onshape is doing is tantalizing: https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/customer-perspective-why-we-created-our-own-custom-welding-feature-in-onshape

Features like these are what leads customers to switch products!

If this isn't fixed soon I will be one of them.

[Anonymous]

A Create Tool for Welding Joints would be kind of interesting to have but I forgot to mention how I create welds.

This is the model section that will have a weld implemented and considered into the modeling design stage. It is a section of an invention for cooking with wood/charcoal/gas and it is portable due to it being built in sections.





In this case I am designing the model to compensate for a weld. The Blue main rectangular body that has two large square holes in it is made of 1/8  inch or 0.125 inch sheet metal. However I did not use the sheet metal modeling environment. Instead I sketched out profiles that I could extrude vertically. This image shows the layers of 1/8 sheet steel.




As you can see there is no gap for the weld to fill in the joints of the metal. This is where the 2 in 1 process comes in that cuts the metal to the intended design size and creates a weld bead at the same time.

Since the metal is 1/8 inch thick I create a construction plane on the top flush surface and move it down also 1/8 of an inch so that when I make it perform a 'split body' action on certain sections of the model it creates a weld bead that is perfectly square. This image shows the construction plane in place ready to split 3 sections or bodies (the exterior rectangular 1/8th inch panel and the two internal 1/8th inch channels.

I made the 3 sections orange to show which ones are being split by the construction plane. Seen here.

Now I've performed the 'Split Body' action and re-colored the sections back to their original color but I left the results of the split orange so you can easily see how the weld bead is created while at the same time the exact and required size of the sheet metal sections is attained at the same time. This is achieved by planning ahead in the design phase and purposely extending the distance of a object extrusion or creation by a measurement that matches that of the required weld size.
In other words, you have to make the design as if it is already welded and then afterwards cut out the weld to end up with the proper dimensions for the material that would get cut to size, according to the 2D Drawings and welded together in the construction stage or manufacturing stage of the project.




Then, although this is practically good enough I like to sometimes take it a step further and create a more realistic weld for reasons having to do with rendering and designing of the model characteristics. I chamfer or fillet the edge of the weld bead that is not in contact with the welded material. This means 3 edges contact the material and 1 edge does not. That is the edge I select to chamfer or fillet.



Then here the edges have been chamfered at 0.124 inches. Yet I went further to give the weld beads a relief pattern appearence (a realistic customized weld bead texture) and then gave it a shiny red appearance to see more easily.



Then that's it. You can then change the new 'bodies' that are the weld beads to a new component and that way they can be easily excluded when creating 2D Design Drawings which serve the purpose of blue prints in the construction stage of the design project. Here this image shows the two components separated and you can see how the 1/8th inch sheet metal sections are cut to the correct size for prepping for welding.

Adding: The top panel that you can see sitting on top of the model is not just floating in its position. It is being held up by purpose designed sections inside the whole component structure that serve two purposes. First, to position the main three sheet metal sections symmetrically and Second, to provide a resting position for the top and also the bottom surface panel for when those sections are to be welded into place.

I know this is more complex than just having a welding tool in the program but it works well and really doesn't take up that much time once you get your tools set. The most time consuming process is creating the weld bead textures or relief patterns for the appearances. You have think realistically and set things to the appropriate scale such as the depth of the relief to be approximately 0.03125 (1/32") to 0.0625 (1/16") and then go from there. Corners need their own specific relief patterns to look realistic.

Even if you don't really like this method for creating and dealing with welds I think its worth considering that even if you had a tool that did the welding for you, you would still have to plan ahead and measure out the development of each body to a size that takes in the consideration of the gap required for the weld. So however you go about it, involving welds is extra work.

[Anonymous]

Finally, you end up with images like these when you perform renderings (this are quick renderings and were not drafted for best results).

[Anonymous]

Some may argue that, this isn't really the appropriate alignment and edge arrangement for welding a 90 degree separated gap of parallel 1/8th inch sheets of steel.

However, if you TIG Weld for example, it can be done, if done carefully, without breaking through the thin material at the contact joint of the parallel 1/8th inch sheets.

See here in this image how the two parallel sheets are arranged in a similar way and notice the weld bead is represented in the way in which it compounds on top of the material without breaking through the narrow contact joint at the center of the weld bead line.These are simply other types of TIG Weld Beads made either by hand or machine that are like art in themselves.

There are lots of patterns that can be made for weld beads with tig or even oxy acetylene for that matter.

Such as these:

[Garret_H]

@Anonymous Thank you for posting that technique, it looks like a time consuming process but one that really accurately reflects the time and attention needed to properly prepare a surface for welding and the design intent required in the real world. 

Unfortunate that after all that work one still has NO WAY of using standardized symbols to label a weld within the Fusion 360 drawings environment.

[Anonymous]

Do you mean as in a symbol that represents the angle, placement, and separation of two or more piece of metal intended to be welded.

In the development of creating my 2D drawings for that Cooking Invention Device that I am developing I had and have no intentions of including welding information into the drawings because that type of thing will come down to the person who actually does the job. You don't necessarily tell a welder how to weld something, you can only save time, costs, and energy by designing your projects in such a way that they are fabricated in such a way that they will be prepped for welding as the prep work is part of the cut and shaping work of the metal.

The welder is going to weld according to two forms of education:

1) His supplied education (the one he got from a teacher)

2) His applied education (the one he got from his own experience)

Unless you have a specific demand that you want something welded because your either a) A master degree welder that knows which way is best based on the conditions, characteristics, and circumstances. Or b) You have an attention to detail so high you want the weld to look exactly as you wanted. Perhaps a zig zag pattern instead of the common back and forth pattern. Maybe there is more options to this reality than I am briefly taking a guess at but I think I'm getting at the main points here. And this is not to say that either a or b is bad or good or better or worse than one another. I'm just saying in my 2D designs I prepped everything in the 3D Model Design Phase so that a Metal Working Shop and Crew could take it from there and try to match how it looks in the renderings. Therefore they would have to choose their tools and techniques accordingly but if I put directions into the blue prints of how a welder should weld I don't know if very many people would be happy with that. Then again, maybe my estimations are off point here and providing Welding types on and for labeled designs and the included prep work is a common occurrence in the engineering, manufacturing, and fabrication world.

Instead of rambling on like an idiot any further. I guess I will ask a question to help resolve my uncertainty.

My question is:  'Why do you need Welding Symbols contained within the designs for the metal components meant to be welded? Don't the experts already know which type of weld to create base on the geometry and measurements of the designs?

[Garret_H]

@Anonymous an "expert" will only do what they think might be needed with the information they have at hand. Its like asking someone to paint your house without specifying a colour. They might do a nice job to the best of their professional skills, but if you didn't ask for a pink house....

The use of welding symbols I am most familiar with is provided by the American Welding Society and is a standardized method of communicating exactly what type of weld, how much of it, and any additional weld preparation or post weld testing is to be performed: http://files.aws.org/technical/errata/A2.4errata.pdf 

A succinct summary can be found here: https://www.millerwelds.com/resources/article-library/deciphering-weld-symbols

For your welded assembly you drew a 1/8" fillet weld all around the inner and outer perimeters of your material. While you are in luck that a fillet weld is the most common type of weld used, it certainly isn't the only one.

Without communicating that criteria to a welder, they can make any series of assumptions:

1. You don't need always continuous welds for most applications, an intermittent stitch weld would suffice in holding your assembly together just fine. 

2. The inner perimeters may not need to be welded, and if they do, stitch welding would suffice. 

Unless you specifically WANT that to be done for appearance, and to create an air or water tight joint. In which case, you had best have a way of communicating that. That isn't a matter of being finicky it is a matter of communicating what it is you actually need so that the person building it understand correctly.

In an engineering environment, communicating what type of weld and the size of the weld can quite literally be a life of death situation. Consider where part failure due to an insufficient weld being used can occur. As an example if I were to weld two 3/4" thick plates together in a T, there is a dramatic difference in weld strength if the weld used was only 1/4" fillets vs. a complete penetration weld involving 1/4" bevel welds and 3/8" fillet welds. If that part were used as a load securing bracket, the strength difference between the two types of weld is dramatic. The only way to indicate which is used is to actually communicate that, hence why standard weld symbols have been invented.

[Anonymous]

Very good points.

I was being too rash and honestly a bit of a comedian, I know, I was just thinking about my project in detail because of the fact I am including many specially created rendered images of the 3D design that I will supply as a reference for how something is supposed to work and look in the 3D world that are included with sections of pages of the 2D designs to make construction efforts clear... I assumed that would be enough to make sure the verbalized and written plans and proceedures of the construction of the device would be sufficiently communicated and understood but as you have clearly stated, without a standardized system errors and incorrectly assembled work would likely happen. Thanks for bringing those tips to my attention I haven't really got too far into the 2D Designs and construction procedures, but now with what you've communicated and what I've learned from that, I'm ahead of the game for when that time comes to create 2D Designs and Construction Proceedures. Thanks.