Would anyone have a solution to create material removals (swept or other) that are normal in the center of a tube.
This is in order to make wolf's mouths in laser cutting.
A standard wolf's mouth is therefore made with a basic material removal giving this :
On the other hand, in laser cutting, the nozzle always points to the center of the tube, the cut gives this:
For a straight tube, I found a solution that consists of creating a bent base plate from an open section to a cylindrical surface. Then fill in the open section part with the same function and combine the whole.
There may be a simpler way. Especially since I have a curved tube with two wolf's mouths to create and my current technique doesn't work.
But as the 2 tubes: the one receiving and the receiving one are both curved, the crossing between these two objects is complex which makes it particularly difficult to aim at the center of the tube with conventional tools.
I looked at it and I must say that I understand with compassion that you must have scratched your head for a moment before coming to us for help.
Thank you for your post Zozo, indeed I scratched my head, I even lost my hair!!
I fumbled a lot with the adjusted surfaces because I always had interference in my assembly at the level of the wolf's mouth that connects with the elbow. But by creating two surfaces set in this place (an inner profile and an outer one) I arrived at the right result.
So now, you're going to help me a lot in my job. We have just integrated the boilermaking into our factory and I therefore have a lot of tube bending to develop, decomposition of mechanically welded elements... GREAT all of your tutorials.
If you have something for the wolf's faces, I'm all for it. Even if with my method I got out of it, there may be simpler things.
Tube thickness cutouts should be perpendicular to the thickness like a sheet metal cut. The laser beam goes towards the center of the tube. The laser head rotates around the axis of the tube to make the cuts.
There is always the solution of a filing / finishing beveling for the case of glued or interlocking joints, but as you say, for welded parts a space is preferable.
Forget my solution, it does not correspond to the laser cutting in the center as you want it which in fact and always perpendicular to the tangency point.
On the other hand , is it your drawing that will be used to control the Laser tube because you have defects on the surface after laser cutting on your model?
I hope I have understood the question well and not created redundancy with respect to the answers already given.
For my part, I suggest going through thickened surfaces:
Step 1: Create the (outer) surfaces by scanning
Step 2: Restrict the surface area of the tube that will be cut
Step 3: thicken the outer surfaces to obtain the tubes
I attach my 2019 version of my coin in PJ.
Disadvantages:
The thicken function sometimes fails for reasons I don't know (in my piece, if I want to make a wolf's geule on each side, I have to cut my tube into two halves first);
The tubes created are not foldable , unlike sheet metal solutions such as those offered by ac cobra 427. That said, we can get around this by creating the first surfaces not by scanning but by copying the outer surfaces of a fold-out tube by the offset surface function (using an offset of 0).
Advantage:
It allows you to create the play between pieces suggested by gt22 by using offset surfaces before making the surface restriction. Because in some cases, the laser-cut tubes really don't fit together.
As AC COBRA 427 said, the laser nozzle is always perpendicular to the surface of the tube and focused on the center of the tube. Hence the complexity of the surface area generated ...
It's super interesting to discover all your solutions. The winding is awesome Gauthik!
But it must be complicated to draw the shape corresponding to the connection on a tube bend, right?
For the thickened surfaces, mgauroy, I reworked your file. You have to take the inner surface and then thicken. It also works very well. I haven't tried on a link on an elbow yet. But the solution is also interesting.
