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Engineer's Toolbox:
Way beyond sheet metal

Flat-pattern development gets integrated into SolidWorks

BlankWorks v4.3 from Forming Technologies (FTI) provides SolidWorks 2011 and 2012 users with a fully integrated tool for developing optimal flat patterns from complex 3D designs. BlankWorks has been used for flattening a wide variety of complex SolidWorks designs that go way beyond sheet metal. These designs range from vinyl decals, canvas tents, upholstery, boat hulls, inflatable toys, aircraft and helicopter parts, insulation, and thermoform packaging to electronic and consumer product components.

"For the past 10 years, various industries that design complex 3D parts that are manufactured from 2D raw material have used BlankWorks for flat-pattern development," says Dan Marinac, director of business development at FTI. "However, the most common industry served is progressive die tooling design.

"Using BlankWorks, users are able to develop flanges and blank shapes for their stampings in less than a minute. The accuracy of the developed flanges and blanks is unparalleled in the industry," says Marinac.

New features in BlankWorks 4.3 include flange/blank synchronization with SolidWorks geometry, blank-edge smoothing to generate tangent continuous arc, and line geometry to enhance the translation to the manufacturing process. In addition to flat-pattern development and flange unfolding, BlankWorks also provides a contour plot indicating the thickening and thinning resulting from the forming process. It accounts for material stretch and deformation as well as bending, and it can flatten any SolidWorks geometry. This tool can also be used to assess the feasibility of a part for manufacturing.

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Forming Technologies

Published May 2012

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