Bend a solid 90 as if it were done by a machanical press

Hello everyone. I am very new to the Rhino 6 software but making steady progress for my designs at work. I have come to a point were I have read the tutorials but not obvioulsy understanding correctly.The attachment below shows a flat solid surface but I need to bend the “wings” through 90 degrees so it touches the cyclinder - these wings need trimming which I can do.

Every time I bend it, the curve is very open and not on the line I want.

Thank you in anticipation.

ppg dn400 3dm v3.3dm (564.8 KB)

Hi,

Well the general answer is that you don’t generally model a bent item by making it flat and using the bend tool, you model it bent.

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I presume that I would make the two solids and then join them together to form one solid - this means that I would have to create another drawing for the lazer cutting and bending process.

Is it possible to bend my drawing afterwards as I have aksed??? Forgive my ignorrance but I am still getting to grips with this system.

Thank you very kindly

Yes that’s what you would do, the two flat surfaces and a fillet between them, it’s not practical to bend things afterwards most of the time, and it doesn’t really help with flattening in any way and it’s not like it’s accurately modeling how the sheet will stretch depending on how its formed, Rhino has no specific sheetmetal features.

If your model is made up of clean flats and fillets at the bends, you can select all the surfaces of one side of the sheet and unroll them at once to get the flat sheet. Now of course that’s not perfectly precise because of the bend factors, so the times I’ve done this the process has gone one of two ways: Use that 2D to get an estimate on the material to cut, and send the supplier the finished 3D showing precisely what I want to achieve for them to work out; or, model the “mid surface” of the sheet which winds up being close enough for many purposes.

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@laurence2,

You should check the bending machine that’s going to be used. What are the min and max radius. What extra material is necessary so that material is properly attached.

Thank you Jim and Ivelin,

I will have to create my next model that way so that I can show the fabricator how I want the bent but then re-orientate the up-stand to the same plane so that it can be laser cut ready for bending in my construction file. I can calculate the extra metal required to get the bend in the correct place.

thank you again

Laurie

If it’s just a straight bend then ‘unfolding’ that is not hard, but yes you want to build it “done” then unroll it.