Sheet Metal Bend Relief

If it is ok for the metal to rip the minimum bend relief is zero.

Sheet metal bend relief.

Lack of proper bend reliefs may cause tearing of the material due to localized stresses. The bigger the bend relief the easier it is to align over the end of the tooling. This article looks at two different tips associated with ensuring you have high quality sheet metal in finished products. Select an item see the note below.

Preventing tearing and part deformation during the bending process. 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. To eliminate this a bend relief is added so the edge of the sheet metal is perpendicular to the bend. Synchronous sheet metal is pretty cool even cooler than just normal synchronous modeling if you ll excuse that word.

In general a minimum bend relief is equal to the material thickness plus the inside bend radius. Choose create relief in the sheet metal menu. You are also able to select to extend the bend relief in the opposite direction in the case of a flange for example illustrations below. Type smreliefcreate in the command bar.

Though bend relief lengths and widths vary between projects they all share a common goal. One benefit of a bend relief is that it makes the part easier to produce. Improper bending of sheet metal can cause material flow problems in soft material and fracturing in hard materials. Click the create relief tool button on the sheet metal ribbon tab.

Select a hard edge bend face flange face or 3d solid entire model.