Fusion 360 Spiral Torsion Spring Tutorial

[Music] thanks for dropping in this video is going to cover how i model 3d printable torsion springs in fusion 360. torsion springs both coiled and spiral shaped are extremely versatile you may see them in mini clips clock mechanisms wind-up toys or other small gadgets they're also an important part of my twist lock box designs where they force the locking mechanism shut when it's not actively engaged unfortunately fusion 360 lacks the direct method to model this mechanism but with a few tricks we can easily generate spiral torsion springs that would be suitable for 3d printed designs let's get to modeling fusion 360 works off of two-dimensional blueprints called sketches so the obvious first step would be to create a new sketch and then draw a spiral on that i'll just click the create sketch button and click the spiral tool to okay here's the problem fusion 360 doesn't have a spiral tool kind of a weird omission but it's true we could use a spline tool to rough out a spiral but that would look pretty lumpy we could construct a spiral mathematically but that takes a lot of time we could import a spiral as an svg from some other program but that wouldn't be able to be adjusted i want a solution that's accurate fast and easy to modify preferably without using another program or a plugin so let's trick fusion 360 into making a spiral for us even though it's blasphemy this trick doesn't start with a 2d sketch instead we're going to use the coil tool which you can find in the create menu under the solids tab to start the coil select a plane for it to build off of and its center point i'm going to use the top plane and the document's origin we also need to provide a coil diameter let's use 50 millimeters for now we can easily change it later this generates a generic coil and displays a coil menu let's try the following settings section size two millimeters this is the width of the wire that makes the coil and it will eventually become the width of the arms for our torsion spring section position inside this pushes the spiral inside the coil diameter we defined earlier section shape square this defines the shape that's running around the coil square gives the coil some sharp edges that will be useful later height 50 millimeters since we plan on making this a flat spiral this setting might not make sense yet but if it's too tall or too short it'll cause trouble later i just set the coil height to match the coil diameter so that's where we come up with 50 millimeters the next option is the most important angle negative 20 degrees this gives the coil a taper the further up the coil goes the closer it gets to the center if we switch to an overhead view you'll see we're finally making progress okay we have a tapered coil but it's not the spiral spring we're looking for it's time to flatten it out let's start a new sketch on the top plane next we're going to use the project tool when you select the three-dimensional coil this will make a two-dimensional tracing of that shape onto the sketch hide the coil in your left with just a two-dimensional spiral if you don't like how the spiral looks it's super easy to adjust the bottom of the screen has a timeline for every step we've taken while creating this model just right click on the coil icon and select edit feature this brings up the coil menu from before so we can easily tweak the coil's attributes once you've adjusted what you want to change hit enter and the sketch will update as well let's go back into the sketch i want to add a few elements to the spiral that will act as connection points to the model we're building first i'm going to extend the outer arm this isn't strictly necessary but i'm also adding a tangent constraint to these lines so the extended arm flows perfectly from the spiral next i'm adding a central cord to the spiral with a hexagonal hole this will help it mesh with a hexagonal axle and keep the spring from just slipping when it's under force once it's done let's close the sketch and use the extrude tool to turn this into a solid that can be 3d printed a taller spring will have less side to side movement and be a little more stiff than a short spring finally and this is mostly aesthetic i'm going to add a small fillet to the sharp edge within the coil i just like how that looks better okay it's time to test print the result in your slicing software you should see a preview of the object as i review the design layer by layer i'm seeing a lot of infill inside the spring arms this isn't good for torsion spring infill won't flex easily and results in inconsistent stiff areas to fix that i could increase the number of perimeter lines until the spring is entirely solid but in this case i actually want to reduce the thickness of the arms so i'll jump back into fusion 360 and make a few more changes and here it is the completed 3d printed spring but i couldn't close out this video without turning it into a project of some sort so i created a few more parts and designed this wall mounted cat toy it's completely compatible with my spring latch system sadly the 3d printy kitty is not one to play while the camera's running so instead enjoy this clip where she spends eight minutes pointedly ignoring her favorite toy attachment but don't be fooled by her feigned disinterest i added a bell onto this thing and i know it's getting some use so until next time happy printing and thanks for stopping by [Music] gotcha

Channel: 3D Printy

Views: 15,296

Keywords: Fusion 360, torsion spring, 3d printed, tutorial, 3d printing, cat toy

Id: JA9fNA1EJRw

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022