Video Tutorial: Creating Weld Joints

[Matt]

I thought I'd share this little modelling tip for creating weld joints on mechanical objects.

It's pretty simple and quick I think, and looks reasonably decent. I'm sure there are others ways of doing this but this was my method.

Video Tutorial: Creating Weld Joints (http://www.pixsim.co.uk/video_tutorials/creating_weld_joints.zip)
QuickTime H.264, 34MB

Cheers
Matt

[Twisted_Pixel]

Thanks for sharing.

[probiner]

Matt, i don't know why, but i keep getting error in winrar; No file to extract.

I downloaded to different location, rebooted pc to dump the memories, still the same error :\
It's probably me but, but anyone having same problem?

Thanks in advance :thumbsup:

[RudySchneider]

Matt, i don't know why, but i keep getting error in winrar; No file to extract...

Try using 7-Zip. It's free, and it works great!

[Hopper]

That looks like a really cool video. I actually would have loved to have that about two weeks ago. I really had a need for it.

Unfortunately, I cannot get it unpacked. I've tried WinZip, WinRar, and 7 Zip and they all give me the same error that the file is invalid. :(

[probiner]

RudySchneider, The 7zip did the trick, ty.

Matt :thumbsup: Neat Model and Technique.

[Matt]

That looks like a really cool video. I actually would have loved to have that about two weeks ago. I really had a need for it.

Unfortunately, I cannot get it unpacked. I've tried WinZip, WinRar, and 7 Zip and they all give me the same error that the file is invalid. :(

Do you have the latest version of WinZip? It's encoded using it's 'best' compression, which isn't the 'compatible' one.

[byte_fx]

Interesting technique.

Unfortunately the resulting bead has almost no strength as there is very little penetration of the work pieces. It basically rests on top and has little bonding power.

For welds of pieces at near 90 degrees try using a cross section of a disk and flip the polys so the bead forms a concave filler between the the pieces. Much stronger and better looking.

byte_fx

[3DGFXStudios]

Hey Matt! Can you upload it in a normal zip format? I don't want to install winzip too :)

[Matt]

Interesting technique.

Unfortunately the resulting bead has almost no strength as there is very little penetration of the work pieces. It basically rests on top and has little bonding power.

For welds of pieces at near 90 degrees try using a cross section of a disk and flip the polys so the bead forms a concave filler between the the pieces. Much stronger and better looking.

byte_fx

I knew I'd lure out a welder! LOL, yes I should point out this object is totally made up, it wouldn't work in reality, as you can tell when you see the preview animation here:

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showpost.php?p=893747&postcount=17

[yaschan]

Im on a mac and I cant open the zip file

[Matt]

Hey Matt! Can you upload it in a normal zip format? I don't want to install winzip too :)

Just for I have re-uploaded in legacy WinZip format, you're gonna cost me bandwidth my lad!

:D

Anyone who has been downloading / downloaded in the last 5 minutes might wanna re-download if the archive is corrupt (link is the same).

Cheers
Matt

[probiner]

Matt Matt... i'll post a video for you about welding files... :D

[Matt]

Matt Matt... i'll post a video for you about welding files... :D

Oooh thanks! 8~

;)

[JeffrySG]

Im on a mac and I cant open the zip file

EZ 7z can open up 7z files on the mac... just fyi.... :)

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139



Thanks for the tutorial Matt! Really looking forward to watching it! :D

[JeffrySG]

Great tutorial, Matt! Love that object you're demoing it on also! :D

[Matt]

Great tutorial, Matt! Love that object you're demoing it on also! :D

Thanks Jeff, it's for this:

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showpost.php?p=893747&postcount=17

[byte_fx]

Hi Matt

I DO like the technique !

No longer doing much welding but before I built my first from the ground up car I attended an 18 month night course in welding. Figured it would be both embarrassing and painful if a frame weld failed at 140 mph plus. Drove the instructor nuts at first with big, blobby beads. The guy was an awesome welder and I learned a lot (mostly forgotten now) from him.

I'll pop some examples of Lightwave welds using your technique when I get a chance.

byte_fx

[zapper1998]

Cool Thanks....

[Cageman]

Thanks for sharing!

:thumbsup:

[Matt]

I'll pop some examples of Lightwave welds using your technique when I get a chance.

byte_fx

Cool, look forward to seeing what you do!

[Riff_Masteroff]

After viewing Matt's tutorial (thanks!) and in locating "1stContact" on the Pictrix site (could only find the 32bit plugin not the lsc version), I came across Pixtrix's tube tools.

Looks kinda like a lsc for automating Matt's technique. Note that I haven't installed the tube tools yet.

http://www.lwplugindb.com/Plugin.aspx?id=0a32912e

[IMI]

Very cool Matt, thank you. :)

[probiner]

I came across Pixtrix's tube tools.

http://www.lwplugindb.com/Plugin.aspx?id=0a32912e

Hhuuhuhhuhu

[art]

Thanks for the tutorial Matt.
Is there a plugin that jitters on point's normal?

[Matt]

Not that I know of, I just used jitter.

[probiner]

Turbulance applyed has Displacement in Nodes over Layout.
Save Trans Object or Save Endomorph... :) (hmmm wait this is polygon normal not point normal right?)

or just in Modeler: Make a Morph. Point Normal Move a bit. Go to Base mesh Map>Color>Textured Point, choose the Morph and Turbulence in Texture button, to mask Morph application to base mesh :)

[JeffrySG]

Thanks for the tutorial Matt.
Is there a plugin that jitters on point's normal?

I think I hear the wheels spinning.... :D

[kojean]

I thought I'd share this little modelling tip for creating weld joints on mechanical objects.
Wow, you read my mind. I was following your stills (and now video) from the mechanical arm project and wondering how you did those welds. Thanks for sharing your technique.

[art]

I think I hear the wheels spinning.... :D

Well, it crossed my mind. Would such tool be useful?

[Tobian]

Very useful tip. The tricky part is when you aren't using subD's and doing that as a poly model, that's just a world of pain! :)

Is it just me or were you in the bathroom with a Cylon when you recorded this? :p

[Matt]

Very useful tip. The tricky part is when you aren't using subD's and doing that as a poly model, that's just a world of pain! :)

Is it just me or were you in the bathroom with a Cylon when you recorded this? :p

LOL, no it's the audio filtering I need to use to block out my PC fan, gives it a kind of 'ring' effect, I need to look into that.

[probiner]

Buy a good mic. You get better sound for these. And finally you can go crazy into karaoke ;D

[Matt]

Buy a good mic. You get better sound for these. And finally you can go crazy into karaoke ;D

I have Logitech mic that allegedly has a noise filter on it, doesn't seem to do much of a good job though.

[Tobian]

How disappointing, and here was me thinking you were hiding a Cylon in your bathroom! :D Yeah it's a weird strobing effect. Sometimes the things you do to counter a problem, create a problem of their own. Always the way! :D

[flakester]

I thought I'd share this little modelling tip for creating weld joints on mechanical objects.

It's pretty simple and quick I think, and looks reasonably decent. I'm sure there are others ways of doing this but this was my method.

Cheers
Matt

Awesome stuff. Will most likely be able to put this technique to use on a project we will be doing shortly.

Many thanks for sharing this Matt, much appreciated. :thumbsup:

--
flakester

[erikals]

thanks, i thought of this some time back, and basically came to the same conclusion.

i just wish there was an easier way of doing this, as it takes quite a long time if the object is complex.

maybe this calls for a plugin...

"select intersected points"

[erikals]

bit faster, though the method might have some pitfalls here and there,..

[erikals]

just a note, if u use the trick i posted above, then you might wanna use this Boolean plugin below.

it almost guarantees a good mesh, unlike LW Boolean, which often leaves unwanted polys behind, making it impossible to make a point-bandloop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPOv5c71FGk

[erikals]

bump, maybe this could be of use?
http://www.wtools3d.com/swf/online_help/LWCAD_30/water_pipes/water_pipes.htm

[JonW]

I’ll only just see this thread.

Great Tutorial.

Many years ago my Dad & I did both Arc Welding & Oxy Acetylene Welding Year 1, for something different! He got first prise for the year & I got second. I still think my welding was better & I think he must have bribed the teachers!


Just a minor comment on the weld profile.

The weld should be more of a slightly raised curved triangle in the corner so there is very good inclusion of the metal from the component parts, rather than a bead in the corner. If one is welding say a couple of 10mm plates together you would have roughly 10mm across the face of the weld in the corner.

The point about the Jitter is good. It would be better to have Jitter across the weld rather than along the weld (so the jitter would be wide & short rather than long & narrow), & only a very small amount of jitter, & actually fairly consistant.

After only a few months of welding experence it’s surprisingly easy to get extremely neat & tidy, & smooth looking welds, welding in both the horizontal & the vertical orientation.

One can do something like six years of training to finally have a certificate for high pressure container & pipeline welding. (For this stuff they X-ray every mm of weld to make sure there is not a single inclusion or fault in the weld.)


I also really like the shading on the components.

[Matt]

Now you're just nit-picking! ;)

[erikals]

hmm, i think a new tutorial is in order... :)

this might be a job for BATMAN..!!
urm, sorry, a job for a new LWcad feature....

[Silkrooster]

Matt,
If you start hitting a bandwidth issue, just let me know. I have no problem hosting a non zipped version.

[Matt]

Matt,
If you start hitting a bandwidth issue, just let me know. I have no problem hosting a non zipped version.

For a moment I thought you were saying I had hit my monthly bandwidth limit!

I should be okay, have a reasonable amount per month.

But thanks.

[prometheus]

Interesting thread right now since im about to do weld seems on
gym machines for the moment.

A big hazzle thou since the objects are imported from solidworks through
stl importer and there is quite a lot triangulated geometry as a result.
And the sections arent really intersecting through eachother so using
booleans arent any useful.
I simply use the Color wireframe view and select the points where the sections meet and then create a poly for that.

then I could either extend or bevel that shape and delete inner polygon'
and then extrude that profiled shape and jitter that.

I tried lwcad aswell, but was a bit hazzle going through lw-poly to lw-cad curve and then use profiler, and the profiler was giving some strange results with a closed curve.

The next problem is to only have the seem bulging at the 90 degree angle
and at the side of the construction they should be almost invisible.

Right now Im just experimenting on wich method to use.

Michael

[erikals]

real time fluid dynamics would have been the best :)

or some automated feature that puts points/converted-to-lines where there are corners
(ambient occlusion could help here?)

[JonW]

You don’t have to put a weld around 100% of a joint, unless there is a specific engineering requirement. Usually a weld is in sections. A structural I-beam will only have welds on the flat faces, there won’t be any weld in corners. Welds are done where it’s easier to access the parts to be joined.

[prometheus]

Maybe metaballs could work out for weld joints, Im experimenting right now
with it, seems pretty good for parts that have big angles between them, and it´s easy to adjust size of the metaball where needed and also adjust
them by dragging the points around.

Its pretty simple to draw curves to get the inital weld flow or simple create
geometry and pick those point or add points as you go and the convert to metaballs.
and you can get the bump in there automaticly depending on metaballl influence and or point density.

Michael

[erikals]

hypervoxels could work too,....

[prometheus]

hypervoxels could work too,....

Well..yeah it might, I tried that but I wasn´t comfortable with that
since I can´t get feedback in real time together with the rest of the model, there´s also a problem with surface matching that way,

what Ivé been doing for creating welding parts, is mostly creating rectangular curves and rail extruded them like matt´s tutes..but I also used
ordinary flat rectangular surfaces, beveled them delete inner part, extrude
and subdivide a couple of times, and jitter that.. and save out as welding parts and simple position it where it needs to be approximatly.

Matt´s tutorials were not using triangulated solidworks imported objects
as I recall, so working with lightwave objects is easier to extract curves from with booleans, than messed up solidworks geometry.

A tip of a plugin to use instead of those curve tools in that tutorial, might
be extrude + from artsphere.
http://www.lwplugindb.com/Plugin.aspx?id=3e5c4cc0

no need to align poly or curves, simple draw a disc with proper amount of sides in the same layer as the spline curve, select both the curves and poly profile and run the plugin it aligns perfect, you have options to subpatch it from there change amount of divisions, start end scale, and you don´t need to jitter, since you can use a built in noise in the plugin.
some other cool stuff in there too like nipponite style bevels,and twists for boney look.

Michael

[erikals]

just a hint, instead of boolean, use slice (as boolean leaves unwanted polys)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9q9QutDjbI

also asked pictrix to look into this bug,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiWYdCH7dqI

[prometheus]

just a hint, instead of boolean, use slice (as boolean leaves unwanted polys)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9q9QutDjbI

also asked pictrix to look into this bug,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiWYdCH7dqI

I didn´t know about that pictrix plugin, will check it out.

Im afraid it won´t work properly with object meshes that is imported thou.

It´s no good using booleans to get the curve extracted from object imported meshes either, wich contains triangulated polys and heavy polysizes.

So for me its a bit tedious to do weldings on imported solidworks models, also the loop commands won´t work on them, a different thing when working with models made directly in lightwave thou.

Im mostly simply copy the points where the weld is supposed to be between the beams and paste them on another layer, from there I create
a polygon out of them, and then divide that poly to get even points around the whole poly and from those point creating a curve.
so that workflow is a bit tedious.

Another way is to have a base mesh already made, and simply match
it around the beam.

Im still not convinced over wich method to use for best workflow, when
it comes to bumping the welds, jittering them or using displacement maps,
theres some advantages when using displacements since you can control them non destructivly and also have them activated at render time.

As seen on my sample here, Im not completly satisfied with the welds, real
welds on these machines are a little bigger and flatter wich actually almost
melts in to the beams at the edges, there´s actually a very small amount of dents in the middle of the welds, some smoothing errors on nuts and bolts, ignore that.

Heavy polycount´s around 300 000-600 000 makes it a little hard to navigate also, so Im copying the parts to be welded on another layer to make it easier to work with and the paste the welds in when finished.


Michael

[erikals]

Im afraid it won´t work properly with object meshes that is imported thou.
boolean won't work? or slice won't work? (i used slice)

It´s no good using booleans to get the curve extracted from object imported meshes either, wich contains triangulated polys and heavy polysizes.
slice worked out pretty good in my video posted above

So for me its a bit tedious to do weldings on imported solidworks models, also the loop commands won´t work on them, a different thing when working with models made directly in lightwave thou.

can you send me a solidworks model so i can test?

As seen on my sample here, Im not completly satisfied with the welds, real
welds on these machines are a little bigger and flatter wich actually almost
melts in to the beams at the edges, there´s actually a very small amount of dents in the middle of the welds, some smoothing errors on nuts and bolts, ignore that.
yep, wonder what's the fastest fix to that...

[prometheus]

can you send me a solidworks model so i can test?


yep, wonder what's the fastest fix to that...

Cant send you the companys solidworks models, I could send only a couple of beam parts maybe.

I´ll have to check it again with booleans thou, if I have the time to do so, to make sure Im not fooling anyone or myself:9

Michael

[prometheus]

heres a couple of beam parts, exported from solidworks and converted
from deep exploration (wich is really nice to do surfacing and conversions)

those parts are the same beams as in shown image in earlier post, but
without some parts.

Just for those who wants to give it a try to do welds on this type of mesh, yes it´s an uggly triangulated mesh, wich I don´t have time to clean up and poly reducing tools are endangering to destroy detailed geometry.

welds are supposed to be as shown in image in earlier post, wich is a lightwave render, and they are
actually quite simple in terms that they are pretty straight mostly.

Michael

[erikals]

yep, you are right, the loop function doesn't work (only partly) on the solidworks model.
if the solidworks model was clean, maybe, it would have worked (not sure)

worked on the LW model i tested though.

[prometheus]

yep, you are right, the loop function doesn't work (only partly) on the solidworks model.
worked on the LW model i tested though.

if the solidworks model was clean, maybe, it would have worked (not sure)

the solidworks model is quite clean as what I know of, But they are solids
and once converted to polys this is what it ends up looking like.

Ohh man if Lightwave could handle solids, and a surfacing and component
picking workflow as in deep exploration, it would rock, then just render.

No problems to spin around the model in deep exploration with a model wich by converting to a polymodel would be six hundred polys an would be very slow to work with in lightwave.
Very easy to navigate in deep explorer,select parts, drag and drop materials etc.
unfortunatly it hasn´t lightwaves renderer, maybe something
for newtek to think about..to match the deal with solidworks-modo render engine.


Michael

[erikals]

an option....

(count the times i say "and ah..." and receive free gift...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZAHyzCqJNY

 

[prometheus]

an option....

(count the times i say "and ah..." and receive free gift...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZAHyzCqJNY

 

Yeah..I noticed that one yesterday while browsing youbube videos for lightwave stuff and I thought you must have had this thread in mind.

Looks good, not sure It would fit for this thou, this isn´t the normal bumpy edge weld, but a bigger gap that needs to be closed with a more smoother weld bridge.

for small welds it would work, Not sure thou if the boolean´s work properly with imported geometry such as this, I have to check tomorrow.

The smoothest would be to have a subdiv patch bridge between the polygons, but that needs rebuilding of the parts, Maybe I´ll should do that later on and simply load and merge in when needed.
I would always need to change angle and position the subpatch part to match original geometry thou, since every new machine will be different.

So there is a few ways to do this certainly, Im interested to hear other solutions thou since the challenge is to work with imported geometry.

As I mentioned, I just selected outer points of the beam and extend them, scale and move to match the handles geometry and then subpatch it.

for simple edge welds, I mainly use pixtrix Px_bezier curve with the tube mode.

Voxels need to be surfaced properly to match the hard surface thou.

The geometry parts are uploaded here in my first post, for anyone to try and close with whatever method prefered.

Thanks for the vid erikals.

Edit...oops... I thought this was the thread featuring my post of how to best weld a certain part...
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113001

Michael