Creating A Tube With Normal To Surface End Cutoffs

This was a question posed a few weeks ago on the SolidWorks Forums.  How do you model a tube with an end cutoff normal to the surface of the tube?  This is the type of cut that would be created with a laser.  The tube is held in a chuck that rotates the tube around it centerline.  The laser head will move along the tube centerline to make the cut.  A google search on 'laser tube cutting' will get you several links to companies that do this type of work and have some neat videos of the lasers in action.

Tube With Trims Normal to Tube Surface

Using typical SolidWorks modeling techniques, Extrudes and Cuts with solid bodies, this looks like an impossible task.  This is where we, as SolidWorks users, need to think beyond our normal tools we use everyday and take a look at some of the other tools SolidWorks offers us.

This type of tube is very easy to make using Surfaces.  One of the cool aspects of surfaces is when you offset a surface it is offset normal to the seed surface.  We can take advantage of this behavior to model our tube.

Surface Offset

What we will do is sweep a surface, then trim the surface and finally thicken the surface to create the solid body tube.

Tube Created Using Surfaces

Here is a video of the process and the SolidWorks 2009 file of the tube.

A very easy task when you break out of the thought process to create the tube with solids.  There are all kinds of ways surfaces can be used to make your modeling projects much easier.  In the future, I will explore a few other techniques for modeling with surfaces instead of solids.

Cheers,

Anna

Comments

[Will C]

Thanks, this helped me for exactly the same reason, laser cutting a piece of tubing. Its a little weird using trim surface instead of the extrude cut, but it worked fine.

Thanks Anna,

P.S. I had to send my motherboard to ASUS and get an RMA. I'll let you know what the diagnosis is and how my PC build goes from there.

[Doug Murray]

This is a neat solution. It's not only lasers that make this type of cut, but also milling, plasma, flame and water jet. We have used the Wrap feature for years to make this type of cut. Create a development of the cut, which we need to train our robot or welder, then wrap it on the OD and let SolidWorks know if to cut or add and in which direction. It works great and does not take much memory either.

[Josh]

Now this looks like a great weapon! :) Thanks for the tips!