How to draw the bending of sheet metal after grooving in Solidworks? This question has no answer. It is indeed a sheet metal processing issue, but it does not seem to be a sheet metal problem. Why is that? First, let's understand what sheet metal is and what sheet metal grooving process is.
What is sheet metal? It mainly uses the plasticity of metal, targeting metal sheets, to obtain individual sheet metal parts through processes such as bending, punching, and forming, and then assembles the final sheet metal parts through welding, riveting, and other methods.
Characteristics of sheet metal parts:
The most significant feature of sheet metal parts is that the thickness of the same sheet metal part must be the same. The connection between sheet metal walls is made through bending. The material utilization of sheet metal parts is very high because they are processed through bending, forming, and punching, unlike mechanical processing, which involves removing a large amount of material. Therefore, the amount of material removed in sheet metal processing is relatively small. Due to the thin walls of sheet metal parts, they are relatively light in weight, making design, operation, and use more convenient. Therefore, sheet metal parts are widely used in many industries.
What is sheet metal grooving process?
Sheet metal processing is widely used in various places. In some high-end metal decorations, the more complex the shape of the bent metal sheet ornaments, the more it can reflect the designer's design level and trendy style, thereby attracting the attention of a large number of customers. At the same time, the workpiece needs to meet the process requirements such as small bending edges, as small as possible arc radius, no traces on the workpiece surface, and decorative surface. Traditional bending processes are difficult to meet these special process requirements. Therefore, the grooving bending process on metal sheets has emerged.
The grooving bending process is a process where a grooving machine is first used to scribe V-shaped grooves on the metal sheet where bending is needed, and then the bending process is carried out according to the requirements. The characteristics of the grooving bending process are as follows: the small arc radius of the workpiece edges, no folding marks on the workpiece. Because the size of the workpiece's edge arc radius after bending is proportional to the thickness of the sheet, the thicker the sheet, the larger the radius of the arc formed by bending. Therefore, after grooving the metal sheet, the remaining thickness of the sheet becomes half or even smaller, which can significantly reduce the radius of the workpiece's edge after bending. Since the remaining thickness of the bending area after grooving is relatively thin, the deformation force during bending will also be correspondingly reduced, without spreading to the unbent areas. Therefore, there are no folding marks on the surface of the workpiece after bending. Additionally, due to the thin thickness at the bending area, the risk of pressure marks on the decorative surface is avoided.
This reduces the tonnage of equipment required for bending sheet metal. In the bending process, the bending force required for the metal sheet is directly proportional to its thickness. The thicker the metal sheet, the greater the bending force required, and the corresponding tonnage of equipment also increases. By grooving the metal sheet at the bending area before bending, the remaining thickness of the sheet at that area is greatly reduced, which in turn reduces the bending force required during bending, allowing thick sheets to be bent on machines with smaller tonnage. This not only reduces equipment investment but also saves energy and space, especially for the bending of complex shaped workpieces and controlling springback force.
In summary, the most significant feature of sheet metal parts is that the thickness of the same sheet metal part is the same. If the thickness of this part is completely different after grooving, it is completely different from traditional sheet metal. However, the grooving process is widely used in the sheet metal industry, so grooved sheet metal should be considered a relatively special existence among sheet metal parts.
Although Solidworks software has a sheet metal module, due to the specificity of grooved sheet metal, the software developers may not have considered the grooving process. Therefore, the existing software functionality does not have commands specifically supporting the grooving process, or it could be due to my limited knowledge and not delving into this feature. I will later provide this information to the original manufacturer for the development engineers, hoping that it will be considered in future versions.
So, how can this problem be solved within the existing software conditions? An unofficial method is to first draw a sheet metal part with the thickness after grooving using the software, and then manually add the thickness before grooving. This way, the same effect as grooving can be achieved, although it is cumbersome. It can temporarily address the urgent need, and those in need can try this method first.
As for how to calculate the coefficient after grooving, since the thickness after grooving is generally 0.3 to 0.8mm, it can be calculated according to the thickness after grooving using conventional methods. So, what is the conventional calculation method? The software provides five calculation methods: bending coefficient table, K factor, bending coefficient, bending deduction, and bending calculation. The most commonly used in our daily work is the K factor. Let's take the K factor as an example to explain the calculation method: Both lengths of the bent walls are 50, the thickness is 1, the bending radius is 1, and the K factor is 0.5 (generally the K factor is half of the thickness). Then, based on the K factor, we evenly divide the formed bent wall into three lines, and the total length of these three lines is the unfolded length of the part, which is 100.4mm. We can see that the actual unfolded length of the part is exactly 100.4mm, indicating that this parameter is very accurate. You can refer to this method to calculate the relevant bending coefficients after grooving.
