Wire in the Form of Repeating Wave

ussmex

Greetings,

I need to create a curved wire component that's repeatable along X. I've attached a picture of the shape I need - a segment of a sine wave.

The radius of the wire is 5/32". The LenZ of the wire needs to be 5/8". The LenX needs to be 2".

I've tried using the following me tool along a wave-line that's 5/32" shorter than the final 5/8" height I need, but I must be overlooking something because the LenZ never results in 5/8".

Obviously, to be easily "repeatable" for my model the cut ends of the wire must be parallel to the Z-axis.

Could someone walk me through the "best practice" steps for creating this geometry?

Thank you!

Wire Segment.JPG

pbacot

Others might be able to help you more with the curves, but using the follow me method, don't stop your shape at the place you want to end the segment. Make a curve to form a couple periods of the wave. then cut the portion you want from the middle. FollowMe is working with the segments and doesn't end correctly on a "curve" made of segments. Same is true making a hemisphere, for example, it is better to first make the whole sphere.

pilou

Follow-me tool is very useful when the "first/last segment" is "perpendicular" to the surface section!
(imperial unities don't talk to me)

Dave R

Peter's suggestion of making the start and end segments perpendicular to the profile is spot on. If you were to measure the resulting "circle" on the end of your extrusion, you'll find it isn't a circle but rather an ellipse. This is because the Follow Me tool makes a projection of the circle to perpendicular to the first segment of the path.

The fix in this case is to draw a short horizontal line segment at the beginning and end of the path. I did that in the following example.

Screenshot - 5_2_2016 , 4_58_06 AM.png
There's also a short line segment at the top of the curve. I did that so both crests would look the same when the copies are strung together. I only drew half the curve, then copied and flipped it to make the other half.

I made the wire diameter smaller than yours but that's because I'm doing this BC*.

After making the component and copying it in the background, I hid the end faces and the circles so it looks like a continuous wave.

*BC: Before Coffee.

ussmex

Thank you very much for the help! I used a plugin called Sine Wave to create the curve. Did you draw your curve manually? If so, what tool or technique did you use?