Sheet metal - rounded corner sink

[Anonymous]

I need a little help.  I am trying to produce a sink bowl that is 6”tall inside x 10” wide inside x 10” wide inside in 20 ga stainless steel sheet.  I need to produce a corner flat pattern that actually represents a 1” radius that can be welded.

Now this was drawn as a non- sheet metal part, then extruded and then shelled to produce the look of the part I need.  I cut a slit in all 4 corners to show that I need this formed.

When trying to do this in sheet metal, I have also tried to use the corner seam command; produced 1” radius’s on each side of the sheet metal and flat patterned the part.  So far so good.  What I am having a problem with is producing an flat pattern that will work for the 1” radius corners at the bottom.

I have attached a pdf of the drawing and 3D pdf so you can get a better idea of my problem.

Any ideas?

[JDMather]

Can you Attach the *.ipt file of your attempt here?

[Anonymous]

Mr. Mather,

Many thanks for looking into this.  I appreciate your help.

I have attached the file, but it is the work-around to display what I'm trying to do.  I tried to do all of this in Sheet Metal mode, but was unable to complete the corners correctly.

Thanks,

Tom

[philip1009]

Those corner seams require material warping to get to those rounded corners, which can't be easily done with the tools in the sheet metal environment which is based on press brake tools.  My advice would be to take your current part and use the Unfold command under the Modify tab to unfold all of the bends into a flat, then use a Sketch to draw in the corner seams on the flat pattern then use a Face command to fill them in, then do the Refold command, keep in mind this method requires a lot of trial and error, and even then it may not be possible.  I've attached a sample of this method.  Good Luck.

[Anonymous]

Yea, I kind of figured that this was going to be the case.  Do you think that 2019.1 will have a better solution for this?  Would this be something that could be submitted to Autodesk to look into for a future release?  A great deal of our products are manufactured with this style of corner.

[philip1009]

I'm on the latest 2019 release there is, you do have the majority of the shape figured out, you'll just have to finish the corners yourself.  I'm curious about how your company produced these drawings before, maybe there's a sample corner notch you can take and implement?

EDIT: As for submitting this to Autodesk, there's plenty of these submitted to Autodesk over in the Inventor Ideas forum, you can easily search and vote for the ones you find.

[Anonymous]

They completed them in AutoCAD.  I'm trying the get upper management to dive further into Inventor verses just dipping a toe in.  Trying to get past the "but we have always done it this way" stage.  You know what I'm talking about.  So far, it has been an up hill battle with me only holding a butter knife.  No worries though.

Your help has been greatly appreciated.  

Thanks,

Tom

[S_May]

@Anonymous, curved surfaces in two axes can not create inventor in the sheet metal

that would work

[Anonymous]

Mr. May,

Thanks for weighing in on this.  This is as far as I could get as well, but I was hoping for a better solution.  I figured that the fine folks in this forum would be my best shot.  

Thanks again,

Tom

[S_May]

@Anonymous,

it is no problem to close the corner
but with sheet metal working can not inventor

[Anonymous]

With the new release of 2020 and the new unwrap command, could this be a possibly fix for this corner issue?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Regarding how to create the corner in folded mode, there isn't a change in 2020. Unwrap helps you flatten any non-cylindrical bend (almost any kind of face). But, it does not consider material property or K-factor. It only gives you an approximation of the flattened face.

Many thanks!

[S_May · Accepted solution]

Hio @Anonymous 

Inventor 2020 can handle this but the material is not chewing gum, you will get problems with the production.

[SunsetDuralite]

Hi,

 Here is a rounded corner sink design that can be unfolded with sheetmetal flat pattern.

Thanks

[nguyentan1508]

Can you upload a step-by-step video showing the entire process?