Sweep Custom Profile on Coil

[cheneymax]

We're a manufacturer of custom brushes. One method of manufacturing that we use is called "Coil Wrapped" which involves wrapping a standard metal-channel strip brush on a mandrel. This seems to me like it should be a simple part to model, but I'm getting a couple of issues.

 

The profile of the channel part is as seen below:

The silver represents the metal channel and the black is the fiber. 

My planned workflow for this was to create a coil using the built-in tool and use a Triangular (External) section with an Inside position. The diameter of this coil would be set at the ID of the brush, in this case, 1.12". Up to this point, all good.

Where I run into trouble is when I attempt to draw this sketch above and sweep it along the edge of the triangular coil. If I don't receive a "This geometry will intersect with itself" error, the resulting geometry ends up twisting around the edge creating a blob. I'm not using any rotation or Taper Angle parameters so I don't understand why it's twisting.

It's kind of difficult to explain. The below image is the result if I try to sweep just the metal channel (silver part in 2D sketch above).

I would upload a screen cap but as it sits right now, it takes about 5 minutes for Fusion to process anything I do on this model so it would be a long boring video.

Does anyone have any ideas for how to create this model? I appreciate any help.

Max

[cheneymax]

Apparently, my downloaded f3d was too big. How else can I share this without giving access to other files in the project via share link?

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

you'll need to use either the sweep with guide rail or guide surface option to tame the twisting.

if you right click the model in the data panel on the left and select share link, that just provides access to the one model

[laughingcreek]

a simple example-

this type of sweep can be a bit heavy computationally.  you may want to just model one turn and pattern it.

[Warmingup1953]

Do you mean like this?:

[HughesTooling]

@laughingcreek Using a guide surface to stop the sweep twisting does not create clean surfaces and takes a long time to compute.

If you select path and guide rail selecting the helix axis as the guide rail you get nice clean surfaces and calculates a lot faster. File's attached.

Mark

[HughesTooling]

@Warmingup1953 A problem with your technique is because your sketch is parallel to the helix axis and not perpendicular to the helix angle you also don't get clean single surfaces for the sweep. Also the sweep doesn't extend to the end of the coil.

[HughesTooling]

Here's another way just using Sweep with a twist. Need to calculate the helix angle for the sketch plane then just sweep with a twist angle. File's attached.

[cheneymax]

Thanks everyone! Thought I had replied to this already but life ran me over like a freight train.

The guide rail did it. I think I've asked a similar question before because that was a "doh" moment as soon as I saw the answer.