Sheet Metal Relief Cuts

Relief cuts help parts avoid overhangs and tearing at bends.

Sheet metal relief cuts.

When designing parts for laser cutting one should not make holes smaller than the thickness of the material. When sheet metal makes a transition from a bend to a flat surface or to another bend it tends to rip and tear. Bends in sheet metal are manufactured using sheet metal brakes. In general a minimum bend relief is equal to the material thickness plus the inside bend radius.

There are two things that can be done to reduce the risk of sheet metal tearing. For example if you make a partial flange as above using all the defaults the software makes relief cuts at the end of the bends as shown to the right. The width of the relief should be a material thickness or greater preferably a material thickness 1 64. In the corner relief propertymanager under scope select the sheet metal body to which to apply the corner relief.

This same tool can be used to make a flat piece of sheet metal that one would use to add edge flanges and other useful sheet metal features. Click corner relief sheet metal toolbar or insert sheet metal corner relief. First utilize minimal bend radius of internal bend radius equal to material thickness. Bend relief synchronous sheet metal is pretty cool even cooler than just normal synchronous modeling if you ll excuse that word.

Sheet metal relief cut need to lay a flat pattern of a sheet metal part with a flange with a cut because it is not full length of the original face. Sheet metal parts may have sharp corners but designing a fillet of the material s thickness will make parts more cost effective. To eliminate this a bend relief is added so the edge of the sheet metal is perpendicular to the bend. Bend relief cut into the part again the depth of the relief should be greater than the radius of the bend.

Sheet metal parts with a minimum of 0 9mm to 20mm in thickness can be manufactured. A 1 degree tolerance on all bend angles. Not shown scroll down in property manager is an auto relief setting that controls how corners and relief cuts are handled.