Trying to find the info on the platform, but no luck, all attachments of that post are missing.
Has SolidWorks improved accuracy in this feature?
Are you looking for barrel cam geometry specifically, or some other application of solid sweep functionality?
Barrel cams and transport screws are going to be two different animals.
For barrel cams, all you really care about is the wall geometry. You don’t care about the base of the groove so much because nothing touches it. The actual manufacture of the barrel cam (cylindrical cutter advanced axially while the part rotates radially) creates a complex geometry at the base of the groove. The simplest method to create the wall geometry that you care about is to do a surface sweep of the centerline of the follower, then do a cut-thicken to create the walls. This ends up creating a sorta “flat” bottomed groove rather than the complex correct geometry.
For a transport screw like you’ve shown here, I don’t recall any examples of those in that barrel cam thread. That’s a much different geometry, and the bottom of the groove is actually important. It looks like the interference you’ve shown here is pretty small volume-wise. I believe a transport screw is going to require a clearance that’s a fair bit larger in magnitude than the interferences.
For either barrel cams or transport screws, I think the best way to define these is just by machining instructions. Trying to exactly model the complex geometry that’s created by simple inputs (barrel diameter, cutter diameter and depth, and a radial-to-linear position graph or function) and then creating CAM toolpaths from the result would probably end up being more expensive. If you’re looking to 3D print them, I imagine the error in the model is probably comparable in size to the accuracy limits of the printer.
Well, if you search hard enough… I will try your method to see how accurate it gets.
SWUPC.zip (934.9 KB)
Can you post a model instead of a screenshot?
Also… Your interference volume is 10 cubic microns or less. What are you trying to achieve?