Working Through Design Warnings

Video Transcript:

Okay lets walk through some of the more advanced part viewing and editing features that the OSH Cut instant quoting app provides you before your check out.

I’ve preuploaded a whole bunch of different parts here that we can take a look at. But, notice that each one of these has a design check result. On this part we found a single warning. On this part we’ve just passed with flying colors. But let’s drill into these and see what exactly is going on.

So let’s look at one that passed. So I’ll click passed here and it pulls up the design review check. Another way to get into this is to actually click on the part, which shows you a flat pattern of the part and gives you the ability to look at the 3D model. But on the left hand side it says design checks passed. So I’ll click view and it shows everything. No errors or warnings. I can click this heat analysis tab. And it’s not a great example this part, but it does a heat analysis to find out if the laser maybe will get the metal too hot when it’s being cut.

So that’s an example of a part that passes really well. This one’s got a few warnings so let’s take a look at that. So I’ll click on the part and look at view. So there’s a warning that there are narrow features. Now if I zoom in on this, it’s highlighted this little tip, and the reason that that’s potentially a problem is that that area could get burned off by the laser. In this case I’m not too worried about that because I’m zoomed in quite a lot to see that tiny feature on this part. So let's look at another warning.

Moderate risk of overheating so this is about the same thing. It’s actually done the heat analysis and identified that same small area. Notice that it can potentially get quite hot. This will get more dramatic if I change the material. Let me just show you that. So I’ll go in, and instead of doing eighth inch aluminum, I’m going to pick, let’s pick steel and let’s pick something really thick. So let’s do hot rolled steel, let’s do inch thick plate. Now notice that the heat analysis is a lot more aggressive and says hey that might not quite come out right. You can decide whether you care about that or not.

Finally there’s another warning here. Engraved contours removed by finishing. Well I’ve got a contour here which is set to engrave, but then I’ve selected a deburring option which will actually put this through a finishing machine, which may remove that engraved feature. So that’s what that warning is trying to tell me. In that case, I’m actually not that concerned about this engraved feature so I can select it in the 2D view here, and then I can just say ignore. Now that doesn’t mean ignore the warning, that means ignore this line, so we actually won’t cut that or engrave it. I could alternatively select this and say cut, and now it actually changes the part if you see in the 3D view. It’s actually cutting it out now instead of engraving it. And, as you would expect, it actually does affect the heat analysis in the 2D view. Now it’s seeing that extra heat being put on. In practice, our modern 10 kilowatt lasers are actually fast enough and high powered enough that they’ll cut through this pretty well. And you might see some edge effects from that getting really hot but for the most part, this part will probably be fine.

Alright, now let’s look up at this part. This is just a simple sheet metal part. It is a 3D model and the 2D view is actually a view of the flat pattern. So our software automatically unfolds that part. Well let’s look at the warning. It says bend radii adjusted. So I uploaded a 3D model, and then our system unfolded it and then it applied adjustments because when we bend this on our tools, it can affect the radius of those bends. And so it’s just telling me, hey we adjusted these. If we want to see in more detail what that means, you can click the 3D view here, and here’s the part as OSH Cut is going to make it. But if I switch this toggle right here on the bottom, it compares my model that I uploaded, which is this purple rendering, with the other. Notice how the bend radius changes. So it made a slight adjustment but it did not change the size of the part, it just tweaked the radii. This is kind of nice because you actually don't have to worry too much about how you're designing the bend parameters in CAD. As long as it’s a valid sheet metal part that can be unfolded then our system will adjust it as needed so that it gets bent properly and comes out the right size. And this can just be a nice time saver for you.

Another big feature that our editor allows you to do is, notice that each of these parts are sheet metal parts, but this one has a drop down. So I can select this, and select tube. So effectively what's going on here is we’ve got this bracket that can be cut out of a flat sheet of metal and then bent on the press brake. But our system recognizes that, hey we could actually make this out of tube as well, because we have tube laser. So I can select tube, and then I will need to change some options here that it remembered from sheet metal. And I’ll pick the material. And now this is the name part, but actually there are no warnings on it anymore. We didn’t change the bend radius, actually it's just going to make it out of tube that actually matches that profile. And the top piece of the tube, which would ordinarily come around the top here, will just be cut off. There’s some applications where this can make sense. We won’t cover them here, but just to give you an idea. Sometimes there are things that would cause it to form weird on the press brake. But in tube, it's not a problem because it's already pre-formed and then you’re just cutting it out of the material.

So that’s an example of some of the features that our part viewer and editor provides . We’ll do more videos talking about more features so stay tuned for those.

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