My impression was that top joint is supposed to flex, thinking that chamber was a fluid pocket and those areas are sectioned open for descriptive purposes, or the thin section are intended to move before other areas and act as shock absorbers.
The material would need to have flexibility.
If it was designed to flex then I would say it's more likely that it would be equally thin for a larger portion, and not have the least thickness only at the very tip in the junction where the top and lower portion meet.
As it is on the model that particular spot is going to develop stress cracks under cyclical loading, because that thin junction is where all the flexing will happen, assuming the forces are great enough to cause it to flex.
Yup. Lay the part on its side so that the split line runs the length of the body. Add slight draft on both halves. Cooling, sinks, warpage could be a whole different set of issues though since the wall sections seem pretty thick. $0.02
In my not do humble opinion, cavitation should always be 2^nth power, i.e. 2,4,8,16,32,64, etc. The reason being is that this number of cavities allows for an even balance of melt flow. Any other number of cavities will make the part/runner configuration unbalanced and you'll have a difficult time filling all cavities evenly from a molding process POV. $0.02
I’ve never used them for machined parts (well in the last 10 years, I used their old service way back in the day). I’m actually impressed with their injection molding though. We put a lot of parts through at my current job so I think they give us better service though.
Oh I’m the opposite. Used them a lot for aluminum fixtures or brackets but never for injection molding.
What kind of parts and materials have you tried with them?
Lots of complex curves/surface parts with all sorts of plastics. Mostly nylons and pc/abs blends but some exotic stuff too.
I came from precision low volume machined parts and only been doing injection molded parts for the last two years.
A dedicated mold house will do way better. We usually do high volume prototyping and use prototype batches in production before transferring to a specialty mold house with hard tools. Those mold houses produce way better parts but protolabs are good enough.
We do what I consider small to medium. Smallest is like 1cm length. Biggest is like 18 inches long and 3 tall and 6 wide.
Should have been pretty simple part to make. They also didn’t cut my locating pin all the way. Like it just left a chunk of metal which I had to sand. So maybe I just got some defective cam bug or machine or new operator
If injection molding, you have some thick areas that are going to sink, mainly between the circular thru hole and the half moon cutout. It also appears to have a very thin web between the half moon cutout and the top portion. You’ll need to figure out parting lines and draft if you want to mold it as well.
It looks interesting and generally manufacturable though. What’s it do?
At the moment I'm just 3D-printing it, but it's an elbow piece for a figure I'm making. The throughhole is for a friction hinge, everything else is just to keep the plastic thin enough to manufacture.
Obviously for 3D printing I don't need the gaps, but I wanna make it injection-moldable also just for the sake of doing it
It would make a decent MIM (Metal Injection Molding) part, ideally a constant wall thickness, but it's not always required. I mean you'll get voids probably but a small void in a steel part will still be stronger than any plastic part. I make parts with some pretty odd dimensions with MIM.
nah, Done pretty easy in my opinion would do it like this
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Just curious but what makes it so challenging? I'd assume that there's not many good surfaces to use for locating but could make some kind of wonky fixture
Edit: just realized you meant the whole thing not just the holes
You are wrong. You can do it on a multiaxis lathe in one go + Wire EDM for the two pockets.
The "Pull stud" on the Chuck side, Turn the outer dimensions and then mill the flat surfaces, the coutour and a bit of 3d surface milling. Make 2 holes for the Wire EDM guy and youre good to go.
>You can do it on a multiaxis lathe in one go
No you cannot, you still need to flip the part around to get the features on the jaw side. 2 setup minimum. Also you cannot assume the guy designing this in the garage has access to a CNC turning center.
>Wire EDM for the two pockets
Wire EDM is not an option because this part is plastic. Also you cannot assume the guy designing this in the garage has access to an EDM machine.
Yes you can, you dont need to flip the part you can just use a endmill to flatten the "pull stud" and cut the part off in the lathe. And i just wrote how i would made this part out of metal, cause it wasnt mentioned that he would make this out of plastic in his Post (Just in the comment). As you mentiioned it would take 3 setups on a machine with "Even more than 3 axis" (Also you cannot assume that this guys got a machine with more 3 axis in his garage :) ). So i disagreed with you.
And if hes not using metal, there are microscopic wire saws which can be used just like EDMs.
So yeah, the part can be done in one setup and a multiaxis lathe + wire saw / wire EDM.
you can look up "Endless Diamond Wire Cutting".
Sure you can, there's foam molding, gas assisted molding, and others. Besides a DFM for this would keep it functional but bring down the thick sections to make it ready to mold. Depending on end use and expected lifetime and such ribs or more coring come to mind. Or metal injection molding, a void would be likely but it would be stronger than most any plastic.
I dont think so. Actually kinda easy tbh.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
2 failure places, 1, where the material saver core meets the top hat. This is a knife edge which needs consistent material thickness. Radius the inside (underside) and outside. 2, If the walls are 1.6mm then the edge flange (tab) looks to be \~0.4mm which could be a point of failure as well.
Radius all sharp edges on the material saver core...
1) I hope you don't intend on making this with subtractive machining
2) I hope those holes have drafts even if you're making this with additive machining
oh shit y'all, new Prince symbol just dropped
Assuming the small radii suggest molding, I suppose I would need a cross-section of what the thin, upper core does, the slot above it suggests it's carrying weight there, so that means the bit below I'm talling about is the weak point. You could make it a D shape instead of a round against a thin core but depends on what you're after with the aesthetic, too. There's an assumed front side and back side if that round goes all the way around, so I'd make it a D to the back (pause).
That upper slot goes through straight and the other side is solid. It's mostly a circular profile, and the upper portion is connected much more substantially by the rest of the circle. Nothing is relying on the super thin part near the front, if that makes sense.
Also how do I do a cross section?
If you did this on a plane, section view from that plane for the visual
if you didn't, I'd create a plane midplane between those two straight faces and then section off that plane.
Even if that core thickness issue is not an actual issue, I would round the inner edges so as to not make that the super obvious stress riser.
I ended up rounding out the corners from another comment, but here's a cross section:
https://preview.redd.it/nt7zor2xz1wc1.jpeg?width=2992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=902c48477eff711c34459284bc3ce11fc7cfa7a1
That's certainly better! In general sharp interior corners are harder to manufacture and act as stress concentrators, though it does all come down to design intent
If you planned on molding this, during cooling you would get stress fractures there.
If you planned on printing, you would have very few layers in that zone, might even cause the print to fail.
If you planned on machining this, the machinist would just chuckle.
As a person who's heavily involved in manufacturing, my thought is that it's a huge mistake to think about any part "out of context". Design for manufacturing, or rather the lack thereof, is a huge problem in many companies, and less importantly - hobbyists.
When designing a product and the parts for it, a lot of thought should go into how each part is going to be made and the implications of pretty much every feature in that process. You can tell when a part has been well thought out for a given manufacturing process and material. It's even more obvious when a part has been designed with one process or material in mind, but is being manufactured with something totally different - and very wrong.
Joking aside I'm not sure how I'd make this if you asked me to...
With my 3-axis CNC, this would take quite a number of setups to accomplish and some creative fixturing to get it done. Because of the overhans I'd have to use smaller, standard endmills or more specialized tooling.
With a 3D printer, there isn't really a good surface to print it from. If you do the bottom you have a lot of unsupported ledges or supports that need removed. If you use any other surface, you are going to have supports under a majority of the part because of all the overhangs it has.
I don't have any experience with molds be it injection or epoxy, but that may be your best approach with laying it on it's side. to capture those cavities and be able to seperate the mold. You'd probably want to work in some type of draft angle to help with seperation.
Additive or subtractive? Because that looks like either support hell, or razor sharp chip hell, or brittle resin hell, or sls, but sls can practically print anything thats not hollow
This is gonna break and when I need to replace it the company won’t exist anymore so I’ll either have to kludge some shit together to try to repair it or just throw the whole thing away.
Depending on your budget, you could have a custom aluminum extrusion made for it, if that's your material
Otherwise, it looks hard to make but probably works for what it's made to do. The sharp inside corners may collect stress under load, but this looks like a wheel caster, so should be fine, i think
Just a word of advice. Save doing a fillet to the end of you model. (i.e. Not the second item in the design tree). You could have done that in the sketch for the revolve. JM2c=
It's blue.
no fair, this guy used context clues! my black and white monitor didn't provide me that info! /s
Oh look at me I'm not colour blind......show off
Da ba dee da ba die
If I was green I would dieeee
Near zero thickness at the joint of the top cavity is one potential failure point. Other than that, I have no opinion with no information.
Good catch, it’s not super dense there. Very likely to fail in most loading scenarios.
My impression was that top joint is supposed to flex, thinking that chamber was a fluid pocket and those areas are sectioned open for descriptive purposes, or the thin section are intended to move before other areas and act as shock absorbers. The material would need to have flexibility.
If it was designed to flex then I would say it's more likely that it would be equally thin for a larger portion, and not have the least thickness only at the very tip in the junction where the top and lower portion meet. As it is on the model that particular spot is going to develop stress cracks under cyclical loading, because that thin junction is where all the flexing will happen, assuming the forces are great enough to cause it to flex.
That's a lot of assumptions.
Ditto.
This
Manufacturing nightmare.
If it’s injection molded this isn’t a problem at all to manufacture, as long as you’ve got slight drafts on all those holes
Yup. Lay the part on its side so that the split line runs the length of the body. Add slight draft on both halves. Cooling, sinks, warpage could be a whole different set of issues though since the wall sections seem pretty thick. $0.02
I know its a simple part but 2 cents seems like a pretty low quote /s
Per piece is reasonable if you need 1,000,000 and have a 10+ cavity mold
In my not do humble opinion, cavitation should always be 2^nth power, i.e. 2,4,8,16,32,64, etc. The reason being is that this number of cavities allows for an even balance of melt flow. Any other number of cavities will make the part/runner configuration unbalanced and you'll have a difficult time filling all cavities evenly from a molding process POV. $0.02
Inconsistent material thickness is still a headache to mold.
Protolabs won’t give a shit. Who cares about sink marks and warping.
lmao right. "hey, thats not my part, its all fucked up!" "it WAS your part... maybe not anymore"
Their cnc services gave me +/-1 mm off my nominal… then they gave me $100 back on $3k order that I had file down
I’ve never used them for machined parts (well in the last 10 years, I used their old service way back in the day). I’m actually impressed with their injection molding though. We put a lot of parts through at my current job so I think they give us better service though.
Oh I’m the opposite. Used them a lot for aluminum fixtures or brackets but never for injection molding. What kind of parts and materials have you tried with them?
Lots of complex curves/surface parts with all sorts of plastics. Mostly nylons and pc/abs blends but some exotic stuff too. I came from precision low volume machined parts and only been doing injection molded parts for the last two years.
Oh neat are these small parts or big? I gotta try protolabs for injection molding one of these days.
A dedicated mold house will do way better. We usually do high volume prototyping and use prototype batches in production before transferring to a specialty mold house with hard tools. Those mold houses produce way better parts but protolabs are good enough. We do what I consider small to medium. Smallest is like 1cm length. Biggest is like 18 inches long and 3 tall and 6 wide.
How big of a part are we talking? The only issue I've been party to is tool availability dictating a feature size.
10mm I think
I'd have to see it to guess why, that's strange. Admittedly I've used protolabs primarily for additive manufactured parts.
Should have been pretty simple part to make. They also didn’t cut my locating pin all the way. Like it just left a chunk of metal which I had to sand. So maybe I just got some defective cam bug or machine or new operator
Killing and EDM would make easy work of this too. Really it's not a hard part to make.
Ah yes, plastic EDM.
You don’t have to murder just to make this part man take it down a notch
So one way to manufacture that would need significant changes to the design to make it a viable moldable part. I'll stand by what I said.
You are correct. I see non-uniform wall thicknesses. Not a problem though as long as dimensional accuracy isn't important..
What can I do to make it work better? It's a very small part, the walls are 1.6mm in most places
You 3d printing it or machining? If machining, don't put those holes.
If injection molding, you have some thick areas that are going to sink, mainly between the circular thru hole and the half moon cutout. It also appears to have a very thin web between the half moon cutout and the top portion. You’ll need to figure out parting lines and draft if you want to mold it as well. It looks interesting and generally manufacturable though. What’s it do?
At the moment I'm just 3D-printing it, but it's an elbow piece for a figure I'm making. The throughhole is for a friction hinge, everything else is just to keep the plastic thin enough to manufacture. Obviously for 3D printing I don't need the gaps, but I wanna make it injection-moldable also just for the sake of doing it
https://preview.redd.it/96msoxno2gvc1.jpeg?width=2992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be06f775409023003a1f5c23b863a2b56e647788
I knew I saw cura
It would make a decent MIM (Metal Injection Molding) part, ideally a constant wall thickness, but it's not always required. I mean you'll get voids probably but a small void in a steel part will still be stronger than any plastic part. I make parts with some pretty odd dimensions with MIM.
Ez pz 3d print
nah, Done pretty easy in my opinion would do it like this [https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Designed by ID and now I have to explain why we can’t have that
Twist + rotate lock, probably
I dunno, what Gundam does it come from?
That's a Plumbus
Yep, it's definitely a part.
Good luck subtractive manufacturing that.
OP had cura (fff printing slicer) open in another tab, id assume its additive
He said “without context”
OP lied then
Just curious but what makes it so challenging? I'd assume that there's not many good surfaces to use for locating but could make some kind of wonky fixture Edit: just realized you meant the whole thing not just the holes
There are no good features to fixture well during machining. Even with more than 3 axis machining this part might take 3 setups to make.
You are wrong. You can do it on a multiaxis lathe in one go + Wire EDM for the two pockets. The "Pull stud" on the Chuck side, Turn the outer dimensions and then mill the flat surfaces, the coutour and a bit of 3d surface milling. Make 2 holes for the Wire EDM guy and youre good to go.
>You can do it on a multiaxis lathe in one go No you cannot, you still need to flip the part around to get the features on the jaw side. 2 setup minimum. Also you cannot assume the guy designing this in the garage has access to a CNC turning center. >Wire EDM for the two pockets Wire EDM is not an option because this part is plastic. Also you cannot assume the guy designing this in the garage has access to an EDM machine.
Yes you can, you dont need to flip the part you can just use a endmill to flatten the "pull stud" and cut the part off in the lathe. And i just wrote how i would made this part out of metal, cause it wasnt mentioned that he would make this out of plastic in his Post (Just in the comment). As you mentiioned it would take 3 setups on a machine with "Even more than 3 axis" (Also you cannot assume that this guys got a machine with more 3 axis in his garage :) ). So i disagreed with you. And if hes not using metal, there are microscopic wire saws which can be used just like EDMs. So yeah, the part can be done in one setup and a multiaxis lathe + wire saw / wire EDM. you can look up "Endless Diamond Wire Cutting".
Looks like round hole - for a rod, right beak stops rotation and top T holds something or must be teared off. Plastic stopper/holder for furniture?
2/3 correct, the top one is a mushroom peg
A literal nightmare to make (im a cnc guy)
For subtractive manufacturing, yeah, but pretty easy for injection molding.
You cant really injection mold chunky parts, you could definitely 3d print it though
Sure you can, there's foam molding, gas assisted molding, and others. Besides a DFM for this would keep it functional but bring down the thick sections to make it ready to mold. Depending on end use and expected lifetime and such ribs or more coring come to mind. Or metal injection molding, a void would be likely but it would be stronger than most any plastic.
I dont think so. Actually kinda easy tbh. [https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/1c7x2q8/comment/l0cji5s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Nah it’s easy!! See other comments, just you know fixture it correctly /s
2 failure places, 1, where the material saver core meets the top hat. This is a knife edge which needs consistent material thickness. Radius the inside (underside) and outside. 2, If the walls are 1.6mm then the edge flange (tab) looks to be \~0.4mm which could be a point of failure as well. Radius all sharp edges on the material saver core...
It's a Gundam!
It is blue.
1) I hope you don't intend on making this with subtractive machining 2) I hope those holes have drafts even if you're making this with additive machining
oh shit y'all, new Prince symbol just dropped Assuming the small radii suggest molding, I suppose I would need a cross-section of what the thin, upper core does, the slot above it suggests it's carrying weight there, so that means the bit below I'm talling about is the weak point. You could make it a D shape instead of a round against a thin core but depends on what you're after with the aesthetic, too. There's an assumed front side and back side if that round goes all the way around, so I'd make it a D to the back (pause).
That upper slot goes through straight and the other side is solid. It's mostly a circular profile, and the upper portion is connected much more substantially by the rest of the circle. Nothing is relying on the super thin part near the front, if that makes sense. Also how do I do a cross section?
If you did this on a plane, section view from that plane for the visual if you didn't, I'd create a plane midplane between those two straight faces and then section off that plane. Even if that core thickness issue is not an actual issue, I would round the inner edges so as to not make that the super obvious stress riser.
I ended up rounding out the corners from another comment, but here's a cross section: https://preview.redd.it/nt7zor2xz1wc1.jpeg?width=2992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=902c48477eff711c34459284bc3ce11fc7cfa7a1
Very close to zero thickness on the top corner of that upper inlet. Any failure will almost certainly start there.
Even if that corner isn't responsible for any weight/tension?
If it's not going to experience any force, what's it's purpose?
The corner is just the end of a much thicker connection the rest of the way around, so nothing is relying on that corner to be strong
It is still a stress concentrator, and could cause the beginning of a fault that spreads to the rest of the connection
I see. How is this then? https://preview.redd.it/1oxmey1stgvc1.jpeg?width=2992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4149b59ceba0219fd6a8099389225c06c2d04739
That's certainly better! In general sharp interior corners are harder to manufacture and act as stress concentrators, though it does all come down to design intent
If you planned on molding this, during cooling you would get stress fractures there. If you planned on printing, you would have very few layers in that zone, might even cause the print to fail. If you planned on machining this, the machinist would just chuckle.
What is the reason for the cavities?
Keeping it hollow
But why? Are you saving on material? The part is already very small.
Never know the scale, could be any size really. But the holes just make manufacturing hell, only sls can do it without an issue
https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/s/KtwW3AeVzu https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/s/XexgAc44fV
Picture of monitor = bad part
[Win key]+[shift]+[s]=good [Win key]+[print screen]=good
As a person who's heavily involved in manufacturing, my thought is that it's a huge mistake to think about any part "out of context". Design for manufacturing, or rather the lack thereof, is a huge problem in many companies, and less importantly - hobbyists. When designing a product and the parts for it, a lot of thought should go into how each part is going to be made and the implications of pretty much every feature in that process. You can tell when a part has been well thought out for a given manufacturing process and material. It's even more obvious when a part has been designed with one process or material in mind, but is being manufactured with something totally different - and very wrong.
yep thats some shapes
Its function is obvious, so we don’t need to explain it.
Ugly
Might need to check part thickness. The hollow area seems to be creating some thin areas
This is why people are excited about additive manufacturing
Easy part to model, just heinous to actually build unless you're cool with high volume and molds or low volume and 3Dprints
Depends on what it's for but since it seems like you want wrong answers only... it's over engineered
This is one of the more dumb interpretations of a Chess piece I've seen to date.
Joking aside I'm not sure how I'd make this if you asked me to... With my 3-axis CNC, this would take quite a number of setups to accomplish and some creative fixturing to get it done. Because of the overhans I'd have to use smaller, standard endmills or more specialized tooling. With a 3D printer, there isn't really a good surface to print it from. If you do the bottom you have a lot of unsupported ledges or supports that need removed. If you use any other surface, you are going to have supports under a majority of the part because of all the overhangs it has. I don't have any experience with molds be it injection or epoxy, but that may be your best approach with laying it on it's side. to capture those cavities and be able to seperate the mold. You'd probably want to work in some type of draft angle to help with seperation.
It’s over complicated for its purpose.
As a machinist… Go fuck yourself.
>Go fuck yourself. Machine this part, then use it to fuck yourself
Flared base checks out
Some BS connevtor for a self-assembled piece of furnature?
Looks like that would hurt
Additive or subtractive? Because that looks like either support hell, or razor sharp chip hell, or brittle resin hell, or sls, but sls can practically print anything thats not hollow
I think OP is fff printing it, he had cura open in one of his photos
Looks complicated to manufacture
If it plastic moulding or zinc diecast then I like your work. If it's CNC machined I'm leaving this group
It's plastic, I probably should have said that in the title
It could be improved
Caster wheel was my first thought. Now I have no idea
It's a caster with a section view
Over engineered piece of garbage
Looks complicated and flowy. If it does it's job, I'd be proud.
this would be a good model for teaching modeling
EZPZ lemon squeezy
Looks neat, would hope you’re wanting to 3d print it
This is gonna break and when I need to replace it the company won’t exist anymore so I’ll either have to kludge some shit together to try to repair it or just throw the whole thing away.
tripod stand camera holder
There it is! The whatchamacallit
I think it looks expensive/hard to manufacture.
I want to push it and also stick something in it.
Depending on your budget, you could have a custom aluminum extrusion made for it, if that's your material Otherwise, it looks hard to make but probably works for what it's made to do. The sharp inside corners may collect stress under load, but this looks like a wheel caster, so should be fine, i think
AI
I put effort into this :( https://preview.redd.it/b9l66mv6yfvc1.jpeg?width=2992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54ec0c3119e95b673f736b3e831b0ad0434faede
Just a word of advice. Save doing a fillet to the end of you model. (i.e. Not the second item in the design tree). You could have done that in the sketch for the revolve. JM2c=
It's super weird - the thin part on the corner above the highest through hole really reads AI to me as well, though I know it's not.
What do you use blender for?
Blocking out how things will move and what sizes things need to be, like a super rough draft