Creating a Die/Press Of Logo

[hamishrotovegas]

(On Inventor 2020 Windows)

Hi there, I'm an engineering student on work experience placement. I've been asked to create a die and press to emboss 3mm plate with the company logo. Before starting this I practiced some techniques on some simpler shapes as to determine an appropriate method, but these don't seem to be working on the more complex logo.

On smaller practice shapes I had good results using the following workflow:

• Sketch and extrude a bounding rectangle of 3mm plate
• On a workplane 1.5mm offset from this plate, sketch the shapes. (1.5mm emboss height desired)
• Extrude with taper to plate, fillet edges where needed.
• Shell with 3mm thickness, removing bottom face of plate (as plate already 3mm thick, creates cavity only under shapes)
• Left with a plate with emboss and nearly constant thickness of 3mm (I do realize the plate would stretch and thin but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish).
• On workplanes above and below plate, project bounding rectangle then extrude to the plate, keeping as new bodies.
• Results in desired press and die, No problems.

However, when I try with the more complex logo, I encounter quite a few problems as follows - I have suspicions as to why, but addressing these hasn't worked yet.

• Sketch a bounding rectangle of plate
• On a workplane 1.5mm offset from this plate, place the logo sketch block. (1.5mm emboss height desired)
• Extrude down to the plate - PROBLEM 1 - cannot taper beyond 1 degree (kinda useless). I suspect the fine detail/lines in close proximity to each other are resulting in self intersection and the errors:
  " Edit extrude feature failed
  BULL LOGO PUNCH.ipt: Errors occurred during update
  Extrusion1: Could not build this Extrusion
  The attempted operation did not produce a meaningful result. Try with different inputs."
• I'm trying to avoid vertical edges as this would likely just shear the metal like scissors in the press. Attempt to rectify this by applying a full height (1.5mm) fillet to the edges of the 0 taper extrusion. Some details are too fine for this fillet and require a smaller 0.9mm fillet. Some modifications to the area extruded are also made to prevent fillet errors, namely rounding sharp points and increasing the distance between nearby boundaries to reduce fillet overlap and subsequent errors.
• Delete face used to tidy up slivers and unnecessary faces produced by filleting.
• Left with the desired emboss on a flat plate.
• Attempt to shell as with practice shapes - PROBLEM 2  -  "Could not create a new shell
  BULL LOGO PUNCH.ipt: Errors occurred during update
  Shell1: Could not build this Shell
  The attempted Shell operation would require a large topology change. Try with a smaller thickness."
  I suspect this is due to the fact that some near vertical, near parallel interior faces of the emboss demand the shell to intersect with the faces that define it. Using a smaller (even as small as 0.01mm) thickness does not work however.
• I then attempted a different approach. Basically, as I had modeled the desired top surface of the final emboss, I thought to isolate this surface and thicken it in the "downwards" direction to yield the final piece of embossed plate whose surfaces to which i could make the press and die extrusions.
• Derive into new part as surface, attempt to thicken - PROBLEM 3 - Selecting all faces of the surface as a quilt fails, even with a very thin (0.01mm) thickness. Error " Create Thicken/Offset feature failed
  BULL LOGO SURFACE.ipt: Errors occurred during update
  Thicken6: Could not build this Thicken
  The attempted Thicken operation would result in a large topology change. Try with a smaller thickness."
  Attempted to thicken groups at once instead of the whole thing. Worked fine on faces parallel to the plate (i.e. flat horizontal faces) but on fillets it wold not extend the full 3mm, instead not reaching below the 1.5mm emboss height, see file.

I'm really unsure what do do next hopefully someone on here knows how best to approach this.

I've attached all the files (some in first reply as i was limited to 3 on this post, here's a quick rundown on what each is:

BULL.ipt - source file for sketch block of logo
BULL LOGO PUNCH.ipt - upper section of press tool, this is as desired as it was extruded to the successful upper surface of the embossed plate. Bottom surface is the one i can't quite seem to make.

BULL LOGO SURFACE.ipt - correct upper surface isolated
PRACTICE.ipt - demonstration of workflow on simpler shapes

[hamishrotovegas]

Practice file

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I am sorry that I missed this thread. It has been a month without any reply. Have you resolved the issues? If not, could you be more specific in how to reproduce the exact problems? I took a look at the parts. I believe some detail geometry could cause modeling failure to happen. But, I need to know which exact area or which feature you are talking about. Please share a bit more detail.

Many thanks!

[kelly.young]

Hello @hamishrotovegas it seems that you were pretty close and had a good workflow with the practice part. See attached, hope that helps.

Please select the Accept Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[hamishrotovegas]

Hi there, thank you for getting back to me

I've finished my placement and so I'm back on the uni machines with only solidworks available. I'm planning on purchasing a desktop machine and getting the student version of inventor soon, but for now have only my laptop with no storage to spare. When I do I'll check out the part provided and see if I can have any further improvements.

I did end up pretty close in the end, and learnt a lot, so all is not lost.

Cheers