Coil to Flat Pattern

Anonymous

Coil to Flat Pattern

Anonymous
Not applicable

The last time that I found that this was addressess on this forum was 3 years ago and it never really got answered. I am creating an auger flight using the coil feature which is the easy part. When I try to "Create a Flat Pattern" I get an error messaage stating "Failure in creating flat pattern". I am able to do this in Solidworks using the sheet metal "lofted bends" command and it works perfectly. The only problem is that my customer uses Inventor 2016. Has anyone figured out how to do this in the last 3 years?

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CCarreiras
Mentor
Mentor

HI!

 

It's possible, not as a tool, but there's workaraound to do that. Search better in this forum you will find.

CCarreiras

EESignature

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Ezekiel12
Collaborator
Collaborator

karthur1
Mentor
Mentor

Auger flights are tough in Inventor because they are not "geometrically correct".  In order for them to be formed, one side will have to be "stretched" into shape.  Inventor cannot handle this.  The closest that I have come to solving this in Inventor is by using a coil feature.... but as soon as the width of the flight exceeds the thickness, it will fail (see "HelicalFlat_2015 (Flattens).ipt").

 

I can create the flight using surfaces and then thicken the surface, but Inventor will not flatten this because the part is "twisted" into shape. See "Rotary Kiln FlightV2.ipt"

 

If somone finds a way to do auger flights in Inventor and flatten them..... I would like to see it.

 

Kirk

karthur1
Mentor
Mentor

I was finally able to do this using a 3D sketch and the Helical Curve Command.  I attached a simple part here (2015 format) and a video of how I did it.  This is for one revolution. 

 

Kirk

 

Helical Flight.jpg

RobJV
Collaborator
Collaborator

We may have to do some auger repairs in our shop and I want to make sure Inventor is capable of handling this including a valid flat pattern.  Kirk, can you verify this has given you what you have required for creating the flights?

 

Thanks,

 

Rob

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karthur1
Mentor
Mentor

We have only used this to create a portion of a flight. The one that we did only went about 45 deg around the diameter.  It worked perfectly for us. I have not had the opportunity to do a full 360deg flight with this method.

 

If you use it, let us know how it goes.

 

Kirk

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blair
Mentor
Mentor

Attached is a work around for getting flat layout.


Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

Just insert the picture rather than attaching it as a file
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Anonymous
Not applicable

Yeah I'm in agreement with everyone that the Flat Pattern tool will not end up being the way to go. I'd use a series of equations and probably derive a new part to make the flat pattern. Anybody have an image for what the flat pattern of a part like that ends up looking like?

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karthur1
Mentor
Mentor

The part I posted above will flatten.  If its just a straight flight, it should look like this for 1 revolution.

 

Kirk

 

2016-04-21_1620.png

bottonda
Contributor
Contributor

This is fantastic, thank you so much!!!!

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Anonymous
Not applicable

SOLVED ME HOURS OF WORK TIME. 

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