Hi All,
I am trying to model a tube that has a helical cut in it, axially, going through the entire wall thickness (to end up with a spiral cut down outside of the tube.
That's no big deal, but where I have trouble is that the engineers want the cut to be intermittent. They want the cutter to follow the helix, for 270 degrees of rotation, then stop cutting for 20 degrees, then start cutting again for another 270 degrees for the entire length of the tube. They also want the helix to have a variable pitch, and they aren't real sure just yet how many degrees of "cutting" and "stopped cutting" they want, so it could vary, depending on how the tube behaves after some samples have been made.
I created a helix to run the length of the tube as a reference. I then started a 3d sketch, converted entities on the helix, trimmed it where the 270 degrees would stop, and made a sweeping cut. This represents the first cut. That's all fine and dandy, but I can't figure out how to make multiple cuts without making each one individually. With the possibility of the degrees changing is there a more appropriate way of doing this? Is there a way to do a linear pattern that rotates at the same time? Or, maybe a curve driven pattern or something?
Please help! (I'm using SolidWorks 2006.)
Relz