Sheet metal auger blade flat pattern?

I need to create flat patterns of sheet metal auger blades.
I cant seem to create them as sheet metal parts in Solidworks.
I have a lot of experience with cones and other types of transition layout,
just wish Solidworks could do it.

Anybody know how to do this with Solidworks?

Thanks

 

Sure

You can only have one rotation though

Create a helix for your outside and one for your inside

Then create a 3d sketch and convert entities one for each helix
Insert/Sheet Metal/Lofted Bends
that is all
Corey Scheich

 

Thank you very much.
That worked great!

 

BTW manufacturing an auger segment is easily achieved by creating a
disc of material with an inner and outer diameter, the inner diameter
must be slighlty bigger than the arbor and the outer diameter also
slightly bigger than the finished auger outer diameter. Make a single
cut normal to the circumference through one side of the disc and then
stretch it to one auger pitch. These segments can then be welded
together to the required length.

 

BTW manufacturing an auger segment is easily achieved by creating a

your description just jogged my memory. years ago i worked in a shop (food
processing) that had a "flight" forming machine. flight in this case refers
to "pitch". it was a funky little press with very unique dies. the flight
was formed a few inches at a time as the operator rotated through the blank
through the press. it took some practice to get different pitches.

 

I used to work in the Engineering department of the Gleaner combine plant
before the plant closed and moved. We made LOTS of augers and made most of
our own flighting, and the flat pattern for them was a flat strip on a coil.
The way the machine worked was to run this strip in and squeeze one edge of
it so that it got longer than the other one. By controlling different
rollers and guides, you set the ID, OD, and pitch of the flighting. The
upside of the process is that you can make long continuous lengths of
flighting. The downside is that the flighting is thicker at the base than
it is out at the outside edge. If we needed a constant thickness section in
high-wear areas, they had to be cut out of plate and pulled, but you only
got one pitch at a time.

WT

 

Always use caution with lofted bends!!!!!

I remember looking at the lofted bend feature to help automate our auger
flighting design, but its results were no where close to what our flat
pattern designs from trial and error. I never looked into it much
further.

I used to work at a place where we made LOTS of augers mostly for the
feed mixing industry (for feedlots and dairies). Our augers had some
pretty heavy flighting ranging from .25" to .75" thick and up to 36" in
outside diameter.

These heavy augers used sectional flighting, flighting made one pitch at
a time. The flat pattern was just a large washer or donut shape with a
pie section cutout. That flat pattern is then put in a press in which
the top and bottom die is pretty much just a section of flighting. The
operator would handle the workpiece, bending a small section of the
flight with each stroke of the press. A very simple and inexpensive
operation, really, but the process took a lot of skill and experience on
the operator's part to know how to manipulate the workpiece and press.

We used some simple formulas and rules of thumb to calculate the shape
of the flat pattern. In almost every case, the flat was a trial and
error process: cut the flat, bend it, modify the flat, try again.

Furthermore, material, thickness, and shape of the auger (many had
notches or holes for mounting knives on the OD) could drastically affect
the bending process and flat pattern dimensions.