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Unrolling Surfaces


SpecialtyTool
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I have a part that will be laser cut and rolled into the shape of a cone but the only print I have is the formed part (actually a solid model, I just plan on forming it). Is there any way to design it in MasterCam as a surface and unroll it to get a flat template?

 

 

You can unroll the wire frame, just create edge curves.

 

Catia can unroll the surfs as well as a few other cad packages.

For some its an add on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEACE :D

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  • 1 month later...

Would this work with a sheetmetal type part model with bends?

 

It depends on many factors, but a lot depends on how accurate you want the final result to be, and what radius the bends are at. Vanilla Solidworks has functions that fold/unfold models, and allow you to chose different bend radii and other material properties that govern the behavior of a bend. Then there are fancier add on modules that let you go further, unfolding more complex geometry and flattening more complex 3d forms. If it's a simple box part, you can take a test strip of a known length, and then bend it with the tooling you will use, then measure the resultant "L" on the outside to see how material will react and then draw the appropriate shape.

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Tried it yesterday. The ellipse frustum was a complete disaster. What you get as a flat surface from FlattenSurf.dll is not accurate. The good part is that the result is the same in Rhino and in Mastercam so no real need to change over to another software. Mastercam has the tool. There's also a small chance that I am wrong since both softwares returned the same result but 1-1/2" difference and different gaps on the top and bottom of the frustum kind of convinced me that I am no wrong.

 

The cone frustum seems to be accurate as that could be confirmed easily with a math calculation. I gave up on that though as the radius if the product is too small and the flat surface can't bend around it. Instead I will machine everything out of solid.

 

Hope that will help the next person.

 

Cheers

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