Bender

[01sporty]

This is a float wire bender that I just completed for a client that manufactures gas tanks.

These two pictures should download fairly quickly.


As should this movie.
http://www.chicobritish.org//images/Misc/Bender/BenderMovie-2.4Mb.wmv


Here's the same stuff in a lot better resolution.
http://www.chicobritish.org//images/Misc/Bender/Bender1200x900.jpg
http://www.chicobritish.org//images/Misc/Bender/Bender2-1200x900.jpg

http://www.chicobritish.org//images/Misc/Bender/BenderMovie-6.2Mb.wmv

Walt

[DennisCNC]

   thats trick!!!

[Chaoticone]

Good job Walt.


Brett

[wantcnc]

Amazing piece of kit

Thanks for sharing



JB

[ynneb]

Ive never seen one of those b4.
What do you make with the wire ?
I am glad you posted a video too, otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue what it did.

[01sporty]

Ive never seen one of those b4.

Nor are you likely to again.  It's what's known as a purpose built machine.  Strictly a "one of a kind".  Its sole function is to produce float wires of various sizes and styles for gas tanks.

What do you make with the wire ?

It's pretty self-explanatory if you think about it.  A gas tank need a gas gauge.  A gas gauge needs a sensor and a float.  There needs to be something to connect the float and the sensor.  Hence the float wire.  They get surprisingly complex and need to be quite accurate or the gas gauge isn't accurate.  If you're in the gas tank business, this is only second to a leak. 

Just to be clear, I don't make tanks, I'm a tool & die shop.  I build solutions for manufacturing customers.

Regards,
Walt

[chad]

A machine like that has been on my back burner for a long time ( one of many ). That is a very cool gizmo nice job!  My question was always what do you use to generate g-code.
Or are you just doing it by hand?

Chad

[01sporty]

All of the parts are somewhat similar and usually only have 5 or 6 legs with accompanying bends and turns so hand writing the code is pretty simple.  I only wrote the code for 3 of their parts before I turned the machine over to them.  We had a training session on how to run the machine and write code for new parts.  I did extensive commenting on the three parts I coded so they can just copy what I did.  Some of the trickier stuff I put in macros to simplify the code.

The real trick part is they do most everything in Autodesk Inventor.  Once the part is drawn, inventor will produce a list of how far to advance the part, turn the part and bend the part.  This production list is what's used to write the g code.  Once the overbend is established, it's entered into a lookup table and Inventor will use those values for the production list.  Once it's tuned, the first part should be correct without any debugging.

Regards,
Walt

[Brian Barker]

Walt,
You need to have a plugin to take in the Inverntor file and turn it into Gcode I had no idea that you could get a list like that from autodesk! 

[DennisCNC]

Take a look at this bender:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?p=cnc+machine&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&b=116&oid=5ba9bee9b02f65f8&rurl=www.bege.sk&vdone=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dcnc%2Bmachine%26toggle%3D1%26cop%3Dmss%26ei%3DUTF-8%26b%3D111