In today’s competitive landscape, keeping costs down without sacrificing quality is paramount. But how can we minimize costly materials used in a design and still ensure it functions correctly? In this transfer mechanism seen below, we need to remove material from the bracket castings and torsion tube. But how do we find the locations in which to remove material and how light can we actually make it? Can we understand the forces experienced by each component without building a prototype?
SolidWorks Motion allows users to simulate the conveyor operation and obtain the loads in the linkage system from the actual operation. These loads can then be used in SolidWorks Simulation to evaluate the strength of the design. This really takes the guesswork out of determining the inputs needed for strength calculations. While we can study the entire structure, let’s focus just on the pivot linkage. SolidWorks Motion can also be used for quickly sizing motors and actuators in a system.
Now that we understand the working loads, optimization couldn’t be easier. Being part of the SolidWorks environment makes geometry changes child’s play. All the designer has to do is pick what features he would like to change and a dimensional range of which they can vary. In this case, we let SolidWorks vary the Web, flange, and hole offset thickness as well as the torsional tube’s wall thickness. We also set a constraint that stress must remain below a certain value, like 50 MPa.
SolidWorks Simulation does the rest of the hard work; trying many different geometry combinations to find which one require the least amount of material while still keeping stress within an acceptable range.
In a matter of minutes a new more efficient design is achieved with very little effort.
In the example we are working with here, we were able to reduce the weight from 10.5kg to 6.15 kg). That’s a 40% weight saving.
Take a look at the presentation below.
Here is a short video describing the process narrated by SolidWorks:
