mating a spring to a shaft
mating a spring to a shaft
(OP)
In an assembly, how do you mate a compression spring around a shaft using a concentric mate. The compression spring is made by extruding a helix using a circle as the shape to sweep. The spring does not have any surface to select in order to concentric mate to a cylindrical shaft. I tried showing the spring diameter sketch and mating this concentically to the shaft, but that does not work either.






RE: mating a spring to a shaft
Crashj 'boing boing' Johnson
RE: mating a spring to a shaft
Maybe you created the shaft and the spring with default planes centered along the longitudinal axis of these components(this is the way I would model them). The origin of each part should be coincident with these two planes.
Just select one longitudinal default plane of each component and make a coincident mate. Select the other longitudinal default plane of each component and make a coincident mate again.
The spring is now centered in the shaft. No need to create reference geometry.
Regards
RE: mating a spring to a shaft
Thanks for your tip. I have been trying to mate a spring into a cylindrical pocket this morning. Even though I have been using temporary axes as mates, I didn't think to try it out here. I was faking the spring by making a very thin cylindrical cut into the ID of the first coil. That worked, but the axis mate is much better. By the way, I used the default temporary axis and didn't have to create a new one.
RE: mating a spring to a shaft