Softjaw design

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In this video, we'll take a look at softjaw design.

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After completing this step, you'll be able to use boundary Phil.

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In fusion 360, we're going to get started with gear housing front housing only. We also want to make sure that we have the generic vice uploaded.

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We're going to get started by navigating to the generic vice and the data panel and dragging it into our design,

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noting that we're going to be using this to create a softjaw,

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we're going to rotate this around, It's going to be minus 90° and we're going to get it into roughly the right position.

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You might need to rotate your view a little bit and in this case we can use the left view and then we want to drag this down and over into position.

00:50

We'll take care of accurately positioning it a little bit later, but we just want to get it close.

00:55

So that way when we're creating our softjaws that it's in about the right location and we don't have to do too much.

01:02

So from a left view, if we zoom in, you can see that we need to move it just a little bit more,

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so I'm going to pan over and I'm going to move just a little bit until the end of my part is about in the middle of that part of the vice.

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Once I'm happy I'm going to say, okay, let's rotate back to a home view,

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which obviously isn't a very good view or position so I might need to create a new view.

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So I'm going to rotate this around.

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I'm going to use the corner on my view cube, gonna pull it into the center and then in my name views folder, I'm going to create a new named view.

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We also have the option to reset our home view so we can set this current view fit to view as our home view, which means that if I rotate around,

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it's going to use this as my view And the same thing for my new name view.

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Both of these are great options.

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Whenever you have to reposition or redo a view inside of the fusion 360 interface before I do anything else, let's go ahead and save this,

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and note that we have a chain link to the vice, which is an external link, I'm going to double click on the vice.

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And what we're going to do here is we're going to create a set of softjaws and when we take a look at this, we have a rear jaw and a front jaw.

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And when we open these components up, notice that we have multiple bodies in each of them.

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Now inside of here, the multiple bodies are going to comprise the various things that hold all the parts together.

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So body one, I'm going to rename as my rear jaw.

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And then if we take a look at the front jaw and we go through body too is going to be my front jaw.

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Now I'm going to temporarily hide the other bodies that I don't need to see and I'm going to hide the base as well.

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I'm really just focusing my attention on these two.

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So I want to zoom in and I want to begin to modify these.

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Now in reality the soft jaw or at least the bolting position is going to be the same between the front and the rear.

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However, the rear has this channel cut through it,

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so the rear itself I'm going to hide and I'm going to focus my attention just on the front jaw,

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so we'll activate it and we'll begin turning this into a soft jaw.

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The first thing that I need to do is I need to get rid of all these chamfers on the corner and this is actually going to be a little bit of a pain,

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because we need to select all of them and then use direct modeling tools because we don't have parametric history for this.

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So you want to begin rotating it around and you want to be careful that you do select everything,

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if you accidentally select something without holding down control or command,

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then it's going to restart that selection and it's going to be that much harder.

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So let's make that final rotation and then we'll hit delete on the keyboard and now we've gotten rid of those.

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I also want to get rid of these champers on the bolt hole locations and that's because they're going to be problematic.

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As soon as I start to use press pull.

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Once again, whenever we're doing these zoomed in modifications, Sometimes going back to a pure Ortho graphic view can be easier.

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Now before we make any other changes, let's inspect what we've done and note that it's 0.7-0.5 five inches thick,

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depending on what you actually need out of a softjaw.

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If you're making these or you're starting with some off the shelf options, you might be starting with something that's one inch total.

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So we're going to use press poll and we're going to bring the outside face in.

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But before we do that, let's remember where the other jaw was.

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So we want to make sure that we are pulling it toward the other job,

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because that's going to be the location of the sliding and the fixed portions of the vice.

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So the overall distance that we're gonna be adding was based on that .7-5.

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So I'm going to add 1 inch -.725 inch.

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So now if I measure this, I should have one inch overall and that's exactly what I'm left with.

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So once again, I'm going to hide the rear jaw, it's not really important at this point,

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but if we bring back the bolts and the rest of the vice and the base, you can see that it's in the right location.

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What I want to do from here is I want to activate the top,

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and I want to bring back the components or the bodies that are going to be important to me on the other side which does not include the rear jaw.

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That's because I'm going to make a mirror of this and put it on the other side.

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But before I do that we should note that there are some joints that are applied.

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It is a slider joint and it is fixed, it doesn't go but so far back.

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So this tells me that instead of actually creating a mirror because some of these parts move that I might want to simply make a copy of it.

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We can do that a few ways but I'm going to capture its position as it's a way.

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So that way it's easier for us to select and see.

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When we take a look in the browser and we select our front jaw, we can right click and we can copy it.

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And then if we select the rear jaw, right click and select "Paste". Notice that we can rotate this around.

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We're going to go 180° and I'm going to bring it back and I'm going to say okay.

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If we move the jaw around, you'll notice that this doesn't move around with it and that's because it's been placed inside of this component.

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It's all based on what we selected. However, it's not really in the right location.

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In order to get it in the right location we can do a couple different things,

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but the focus that we're going to have here is first I'm going to activate it.

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That way, I'm only focused on those components. I can get rid of the base and then I'm going to use modify and align.

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Or another way we could do this is by going to assemble and selecting joint.

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So either way is going to be fine because these are a rigid group because they are fixed to each other.

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That's not really going to make much of a difference.

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So I'm going to use modify and align and make sure that I'm using the body's option.

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The first thing that I can do is I can select the back face of the part without actually selecting any of these selection points.

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I can rotate around and I can select this back again, not selecting any of these points and then it will push them together.

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I'm going to say okay, then I'm going to repeat that process.

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Now I want to look at the bolt center location so I'm going to put my cursor over the back face, hold down control or command.

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That will let me lock my focus and I'm going to rotate around and do the same thing hover over this face, hold down control or command,

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and then I want to find the center of that bolt but notice that there's nothing actually to be selected there,

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and that's because this is actually a fake, there's no hole in that part.

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So what I need to do is I need to select the center of that bolt and that puts me in the right location.

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I can say okay. And now if I activate the top level, I bring back the base.

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Now I'm looking at a design that has soft jaws on both sides that I can now modify in machine.

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Let's go ahead and save this.

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Let's close the generic vice and note that our gear housing front housing only it needs to be updated.

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One of the components is out of date. So we're going to go ahead and update that.

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Notice that it updated the position of the vice and also updated the jaws.

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The whole thing is still free to move and this piece is not really attached.

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So there are some things that we need to deal with but it did update.

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So what I'm gonna do from here is I'm gonna right click and I want to break the link.

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When we break the link, now this is still in our design all the geometries in our design but it's no longer linked to the original,

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which means I can continue to modify the original and I can keep this one as is, so let's do a quick save.

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And then let's talk about ways in which we can actually create our soft jaw geometry.

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So I want to look at this from the right and I want to make sure that we understand the orientation of the part.

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I'm going to go back to an Ortho graphic view, make sure that we are seeing this, how we're supposed to see it.

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You notice that that gap is a little bit off.

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That's okay because it's not really going to matter too much based on where we're referencing but we could fix that with a line.

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It just simply because there was no bolt hole in this part of the device.

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So what we want to do from here is we want to make sure that we're capturing everything that we need to.

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So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go into my generic vice.

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I'm going to take the base which includes this handle and I want to turn it all into a rigid group.

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Notice when I right click, I can ground it which would fix it in space. It's not really what we want.

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We want to go to assemble, create a rigid group including all of its child components.

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Now when I move this, that little piece of the handle stays put.

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The next thing that I want to do is modify in a line and I want to move the top face of the vice all the way up to this face of my design.

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Notice it moved the whole thing but it didn't keep this piece in place where it's supposed to.

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So that's obviously problematic because we used bodies and not components.

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So we need to cancel and we need to do that one more time and just double check our settings, making sure that we're moving components.

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So we're going to move the entire generic vice.

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We want to move the whole thing up from here, up to here.

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Now you can see what the components option, it brought everything with it and we can capture its position and now it's in place.

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So now if we want to make some softjaws, we can go through and make some simple changes by using create and boundary Phil.

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We can select the tools which is going to be our part and the two soft jaws, we can select the cells.

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In this case we need to determine what we want to remove or what we want to keep.

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It just depends on what you want to use. So we're going to select these two pieces and this is going to be a cut.

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I'm going to say, okay and I'm going to take a look at the results.

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You'll notice that when I do this, what we have left behind is only the intersection between my part and that's not what we want.

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So if we go into the boundary Phil and instead let's just say that we want to create a new body.

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Now if we hide the front housing cover.

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Once again notice that we don't really have those cut pieces, we need to make a couple different changes.

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And what's happening is what we're actually doing is we're creating a new body that doesn't have that overlapping intersection.

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And it's all based on the selection process that we're using.

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This is what makes boundary fill a tricky tool.

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So if we want a new body, what we're really saying is that we want to keep the softjaw pieces.

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Those softjaw pieces, if I hide the front housing and I take a look at these two bodies and I hide the generic vice.

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What I'm left with our soft jaws that have the geometry removed from them.

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I can then come in, I can select these pieces and use delete,

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you can do the same thing on the other side and use delete and now I have something that can hold my part.

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Whenever we're designing softjaws,

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we need to be a little bit careful because what we actually need to do is we need to make sure that it can hold our part but it can't be an exact fit.

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We need to figure out critical locations on where things need to be helped.

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But this is the basic process of going through creating a modification of advice to create these softjaws,

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and then actually going through the process of using things like boundary fill to actually remove our geometry.

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So what I want to do here is I'm going to bring back my generic vice,

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but I want to take out the pieces in this case my front jaws because they're not going to be needed because we have these new bodies.

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Now if I want to I could take each of these and I could drag him down into their location and they could just simply be part of those.

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Now if I hide or show them, you can see there in the right place.

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But in reality again, we just want to make sure we understand the process of handling and working with this geometry.

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So that way we know what the tools do.

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I strongly urge you to play around with boundary fill on a couple examples,

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because you can use surfaces or planes or solid geometry to create some pretty intricate, remove als or additions to what you have.

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But it is a tricky tool to get used to so make sure that you do play around with it,

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and try a couple different options if it's not giving you the right results.

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From here, let's make sure that we do save this before moving on.