Precision-folded, high strength, fatigue-resistant structures and sheet therefor

Abstract

Precision-folded, high strength, fatigue-resistant structures and a sheet therefore are disclosed. To form the structures, methods for precision bending of a sheet of material along a bend line and a sheet of material formed with bending strap-defining structures, such as slits or grooves, are disclosed. Methods include steps of designing and then separately forming longitudinally extending slits or grooves through the sheet of material in axially spaced relation to produce precise bending of the sheet when bent along the bend line. The bending straps have a configuration and orientation which increases their strength and fatigue resistance, and most preferably slits or arcs are used which causes edges to be engaged and supported on faces of the sheet material on opposite sides of the slits or arcs. The edge-to-face contact produces bending along a virtual fulcrum position in superimposed relation to the bend line. Several slit embodiments suitable for producing edge-to-face engagement support and precise bending are disclosed. With these teachings, forming numerous three-dimensional load-bearing structures from a two dimensional sheet are enabled. Examples of straight and curved beams, chassis, and exoskeletons are disclosed.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 384,216 filed Mar. 16, 2006, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 663,392 filed Mar. 17, 2005, and the '216 application is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 672,766 filed Sep. 26, 2003 and now U.S. Pat. No. 7,152,449 B2, which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 256,870 filed Sep. 26, 2002 and now U.S. Pat. No. 6,877,349 B2, which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 640,267 filed Aug. 17, 2000 and now U.S. Pat. No. 6,481,259 B1. All the above applications are incorporated herein for all purposes by reference in their entirety.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Technical Field[0003]The present invention relates, in general, to the designing and precision folding of sheets of material and the manufacture of structures therefrom. More particularly, the pre...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

A commonly encountered problem in connection with bending sheet material is that the locations of the bends are difficult to control because of bending tolerance variations and the accumulation of tolerance errors.

The second bend, however, often is positioned based upon the first bend, and accordingly, the tolerance errors can accumulate.

Since there can be three or more bends which are involved to create the chassis or enclosure for the electronic components, the effect of cumulative tolerance errors in bending can be significant.

Nevertheless, even a grooving-based or slitting-based bending of sheet material has its problems.

Moreover, the grooves or slits do not necessarily produce bending of webs 27 directly along bend line 25, and the grooving process is slow and inconsistent, particularly when milling or point cutting V-shaped grooves.

Grooving, therefore, is not in widespread commercial use.

Failure of the structure will occur at lower force levels than if a non-slitting or non-grooving bending process was used.

The architects of the New York Museum of Modern Art sculpture recognized that the resulting bend is not structurally very strong, and they have incorporated partially hidden beams welded into the sculpture in the inner vertices of each of the stitched bends.

This tends to compromise the strength of the bend and leaves a non-load bearing bend.

Another problem inherent in the slitting scheme of FIGS. 2-2B and the Gitlin, et al.

This limits the flexibility in designing the bends for structural loading of the straps.

There is no attempt, therefore, to reduce stress risers and micro-crack propagation from occurring at the ends of the slits, and aligned slit ends can crack under loading.

The sheet slitting configuration of FIGS. 2-2B, therefore, can be readily employed for decorative bends, but it is not optimally suited for bends which must provide significant structural support and fatigue resistance.

Again, the bent sheet components by linear perforation were not designed to bear significant unsupported loads along the bends.

In most of these prior art bending systems, however, the bend forming technique greatly weakens the resulting structure, or precision bends are not capable of being formed, or bending occurs by crushing the material on one side of the bend.

Moreover, when slitting is used in these prior art systems, in addition to structural weakening and the promotion of future points of structural failure, the slitting can make the process of sealing a bent structure expensive and difficult.

These prior art methods, therefore, are less suitable for fabricating structures that are capable of containing a fluid or flowable material.

The problems of precision bending and retention of strength are much more substantial when bending metal sheets, and particularly sheets of substantial thickness.

Such bending of thick metal sheets, of course, poses greater problems.

In the case of welding, for example, a problem arises in the accurate cutting and jigging of the individual pieces; the labor and machinery required to manipulate a large number of parts, as well as the quality control and certification of multiple parts.

Additionally, welding has the inherent problem of dimensional shape warping caused by the heat-affected zone of the weld.

Traditional welding of metals with significant material thickness is usually achieved by using parts having beveled edges often made by grinding or single point tools, which add significantly to the fabrication time and cost.

Moreover, the fatigue failure of heat-affected metals is unpredictable for joints whose load-bearing geometries rely entirely on welded, brazed or soldered materials.

The attendant disadvantage of such over design is, of course, excessive weight.

With respect to adhesively bonding sheet and non-sheet material along the edges and faces of discrete components, a problem arises from the handling and accurate positioning the several parts and holding or clamping them in place until the bonding method is complete.

The problems associated with subtractive Rapid Prototyping methods are that they are wasteful of materials in that a block of material capable of containing the entire part is used and then a relatively expensive high-speed machining center is required to accurately mill and cut the part by removal of the unwanted material.

Problems also exist with prior art additive Rapid Prototyping techniques.

The additive Rapid Prototyping processes are slow, very limited in the scale of the part envelope and usually do not make use of structurally robust materials.

Generally in the prior art, therefore, sheet slitting or grooving to enable sheet bending has produced bends, which lack the precision and strength necessary for commercial structural applications.

Thus, such prior art sheet bending techniques have been largely relegated to light gauge metal bending or decorative applications, such as sculpture.

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