Coil to Flat Pattern

[Anonymous]

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?

[CCarreiras]

HI!

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

[Ezekiel12]

Isn't this answer to your question?
https://inventorguru.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/flat-pattern-of-spiral/

[karthur1]

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]

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

[RobJV]

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

[karthur1]

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

[blair]

Attached is a work around for getting flat layout.

[Anonymous]

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?

[karthur1]

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

Kirk

[bottonda]

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

[Anonymous]

SOLVED ME HOURS OF WORK TIME.