HELICAL GROOVE

[skuf]

hi there. i'm trying to cut a helical groove in the side of a tube in SolidWorks. i have tried to use a helix as a guide curve but the sketch needs to be perpendicular to the end of the helix. what i need is the sketch to be radial to the tube. imagine drilling a hole through the wall of a tube and then drilling another hole 90deg to the first about an inch away. i need to connect these two holes with a helical path so i end up with a cut through the wall of the tube. a pin mounted to a rod in side the tube will then engage the groove in the tube in order make the tube rotate about it axis. i'm trying to get the longitudial motion of the rod inside the tube to translate into rotational motion of the tube. its a very easy thing to cut on a four axis CNC mill but its not so easy to get SolidWorks to model it.

thanks

jon oxford

 

[MadMango]

To make cam profiles like this, I cut-extrude the end conditions of the slot, this being the "two holes" you mentions above. Then I create a helix sweep path that is aligned with these two holes and sweep a profile to remove material between the holes.

I haven't found a suitable method to make this out of one feature.

It takes a bit of work, but does allow you to use cam mates to dynamically move your assembly to test the timing of the cam. "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[skuf]

thanks for the reply. i have tried to do that but i couldn't get the sides of the helical grove to be exactly tangent to the original holes. i have since found a solution with the help of the SolidWorks tech support. what we did was to create a sweep surface using the helix. then "cut thicken" the surface to match the holes. works great and everything is nice and tangent.

thanks for the help.

skuf

 

[kombayotch]

Wow, I have been try to figure out how to do exactly this for several days not. I keep running into the tagent problem.

Can anybody elaborate on this solution? It isn't quite clear to me as to how this cut was created.

 

[kombayotch]

Wow, I have been try to figure out how to do exactly this for several days now. I keep running into the tagent problem.

Can anybody elaborate on this solution? It isn't quite clear to me as to how this cut was created.