I’m having trouble trying to flatten a ‘pipe clamp half’ when it is a conical design. The important factor is to have the mating faces of the flanges in the correct location, 180 deg apart, or coincident with the front plane in my case. The attached part is modeled correctly but doesn’t flatten. I actually prefer doing a revolved thin part, insert bends, and add the flanges. But if you revolve 180 deg, the flanges add too much material due to ‘bend outside’ flange location. Changing revolve to 179 deg or so may actually work fine for this part, but I’ve had lots of cone parts that have too steep of a slope that the flange still interferes, or is not projecting parallel to front plane. Sorry for the boring Monday read… but does anyone have a better solution for this? Currently I manually (AutoCAD) subtract extra material in my flat pattern when laying out to lasercut.
Attachment – 2009_8_10_14_10
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ivanl
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gupta9665 1:52 am on August 11, 2009 Permalink
Not sure why you designed it like this way. Simply create the 180° cone and then add edge flange. If you don’t know, you edit the profile of the flange by clicking on “Edit Flange Profile”. Look at the pic.
gupta9665 1:54 am on August 11, 2009 Permalink
Not sure why didn’t pic showed up.Attachment – edge-flange-profile
ivanl 2:16 pm on August 11, 2009 Permalink
I have made it like you said, but it only works well with a straight cylinder. On a steep cone the feature ‘works’ but doesn’t correctly lay it out. Insert it into assembly and do a circular pattern around a ‘mid axis’ and you’ll see the interference. Take the revolve back a degree or two and you’ll see a growing gap. The flange will no longer be parallel to the front plane.