Unsupported Precision Round Rail Calculator

[Jonathan]

... I can now use FEA to do it all for me. if you get any where then I sure would like to know.

I also found that the more you analise it the more time it takes and you soon realise that, as Barry pointed out, just doing a few basic cals on the main structure will be sufficient. adding the rails etc becomes the factor of safety that seems to be missing from a lot of calcs. :naughty:

I've certainly spent a lot of time analysing it now and have to say I'm still not happy. I think I tend to agree now about just doing basic calcs.

Can you point me to any FEA program I can get hold of? I was actually going to ask this in my last post!

[Ross77]

for FEA i use AutoCAD inventor (Student License) because I thought it would be an easy transition from Normal AutoCAD, not the case tho, apparently its more like Solidworks where you work parametrically. Has Soildworks not got a FEA module I'm sure Ive seen them generated from solidworks.

Its worth down loading the trial versions, if you already have the 3d model then at least theres 30 days of free analysis :whistling: