Cases
Large assembled parts keep their strength
Since prototyping machines are limited in their volume, it isn't always possible to make large parts in one piece. It's often necessary to cut the parts in two or even more pieces. Obviously these pieces have to be glued together afterwards. It's very important that the glued part is solid and that the cut is not causing a weak spot where the part can easily break. That is the big advantage of the "Advanced cut" function in Magics: this function creates a tooth instead of a straight cut, which boosts the strength of the glued part, because the two pieces fit in. This way also the contact surface is enlarged.
When a Magics user received this file (figure 1), the part proved to be too large for the sintering machine and therefore had to be cut. He decided to make a tooth (or overlap) of 8 mm. Here you can read how easily the problem was solved using the Magics RP software.
A tooth is always made in the Z-direction and therefore requires that the cut is done perpendicular at the XYplane. This orientation is easily obtained by creating a new coordinate system using the User Coordinate System function, which can be found at the Tools pull down menu. This function enables you to create and orientate your own coordination system. In this case a UCS was made in which the cut was situated parallel with the Z-axis. For that the Magics user clicked on the "Align" button in the UCS sheet and aligned the Z-axis parallel with an entity which had the right orientation (in this case: the bottom plane of the part). The new UCS active was made active and then the part was in the right position to cut (figure 2).
Next the Magics customer indicated a Z section at the desired height for the cutting operation. In the section box the exact height could be read. Then the parameters of the "Advanced cut" dialog box (figure 3) were filled in: the parameters Z upper and Z lower of course differ 8 mm and the offset measures 2 mm (since the wall is 6 mm).
At that time every preparation was done, so Magics could create the teeth (figure 4 and 5).
Afterwards the WCS was selected again in stead of the created UCS and the part thus was placed back in its original position.
| This way the Magics user succeeded in preparing his part for production in a very short time, while ensuring that the assembled part would be very strong and solid. The advanced cut like described above only took 1 or 2 minutes of his time. This advanced cut is unique in the field of STL handling and thus is one of the major benefits of Magics. In a traditional CAD system an adavanced cut can take more time since there has to be drawn a section and a route before the software can make the cut. |
