When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Okay, so yeah, I'm still an aspiring welder, but I'm a heck of a software engineer. Lately I've been way impressed with some of the exhaust collector stuff I've seen on this (and other forums) so I thought I'd do something about it. And no, you don't have to have expensive bandsaws or cold saws to get this done with high quality. You've got to exercise the skills you learned in kindergarten, cutting stuff out of paper with scissors. Tape paper templates on steel, trace edges with spray paint or magic marker, cut with cutoff wheel, clean up with grinder / file.
Here's the project that's stuck in my head.. (I'm working on it now in 3" steel tubing w/ four legs, will post photos later...)
And yes, the tubenotcher software tool is pretty heavy on custom bicycle fab. But some of that is appropriate to automotive and general fab, too. At this point, I just want to start the conversation. Here's an initial proveout that showed me I had the pass thru cutaway all wrong. Now fixed! And yeah, the bottom edge of that top collector 'tube' is not flat.. its got subtle spikes, like a king's crown.
why bother with the legs? I would weld a flat plate to the base, gusset it if you really want to and drill holes in it so you can bolt the thing down to the floor. As it sits that stand is going to be very heavy and very top heavy and i know i would knock it over on my feet all the time. Id bolt it to the floor
Solidworks seems fine for single tube joints (or even three tubes in a corner), but I've been unable to make a satisfactory exhaust collector in that tool. Perhaps the newest versions allow it, but my 2013 copy certainly will not allow for a four to one collector. The weldment joints get all messed up, bad.
There are a few other joints that might be difficult to do in Solidworks (I'm thinking the Sine wave tube ends would be pretty hard to model.)
I designed this software for myself, thought it was pretty handy, and perhaps others might benefit as well. Its a supplement to a 2D or 3D CAD system, and runs on any browser on any operating system at low cost.
I do appreciate that video.. I learned a few things (although I pre-slice my tubing in my materials library). I'd also never seen the broken view settings with references used within Solidworks before. (note, I've already EXACTLY THAT in the tube notcher software, albeit with orientations 0/90/180/270/360 degrees)
One thing I didn't see in the Solidworks flat pattern was a tracking mechanism for material thickness.. Sometimes its nice to understand what you need to cut and what you need to save.. If you always cut the raw material at the black outer surface line you may well be cutting away material you need later... Look at the black and red lines on this plot. The black line represents outer surface, red line represents inner surface of the tube. If you were doing brazing (and wanted maximum material for a good bond), you'd cut proud of either red or black (i.e. leave as much material as possible), take an appropriate length half round file and clean things up. (Remember in half round files, the file length determines the radius of the cut) If you were working on a quick fab job with a welding process and speed was of the essence, you might cut straight in at the place where the metal comes into contact with its mate. (that is, cut black line from 0° to 45°, cut red line from 45° all the way to 315°, then cut black line from 315° to 360°), do minimal prep (just knock of the dross), then fill the resulting gap with weld bead. Does this make sense? I've not been able to get Solidworks to do this.. when I convert tube to sheet metal, the material has thickness, but the cutlines seem to just be representative of outer surface only...
(So yeah, I'd love to have a four axis CNC square/round tube laser or plasma cutter tool, to cut perfect tubes fast.. Would require a CNC/gcode plugin to Solidworks but boy would that be cool... four axis = X, angle of tube, Z (plasma height) and gun angle. but I've gone too far off topic here...)
TubeNotcher Paper Templates
