Screw Conveyor Model Progress Report

The Screw Conveyor Model is complete (for now), and things work flawlessly as you will see in the video below. We have just received our copy of  Screw Conveyors for Bulk Materials (ANSI/CEMA Standard #350), and are currently deciding how to apply what we learn from the standards to the Screw Conveyor Model.

As is, the Screw Conveyor Model has four main controls, but there are probably at least 100 more parameters that can be made available to the end user — or tied to current controls in different ways. For example: There are is a parameter that controls the gap between the screw and the trough which is currently statically set to 1/4″. If a different gap is needed based on criteria such as material being conveyed (abrasiveness, size, etc), screw speed, or whatever else may affect this parameter, we will create an iLogic formula that automatically adjusts the parameter based on those considerations.

Some of the features shown in the video include:

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Screw Conveyor Configurator

The Screw Conveyor Configurator tutorial series is underway as the base Tutorial Series in our new Mechanical Web Portal. If you are new to this type of tutorial, there are several of our earlier ones over in our Free Tutorial Section, but in a nutshell they are very long tutorials that start by teaching you the basics — the skeletal modeling that is at the heart of an engineering/product configurator — all the way to the outputs. Along the way you will learn iLogic coding, the creation of multi-solid body layout parts — including multi-solid body sheetmetal layout parts — and a host of other valuable skills. The sub-series of tutorials for screw itself are underway, and we will be moving on to the trough and support structure fairly quickly in the coming weeks. Read more ›

Autodesk Inventor Tutorials from ODP are now here at ADI!

As many of our longtime visitors and clients are aware, we also maintained — for better or worse — a website called OpenDesignProject. The ODP was started in 2008 as a place for me to post my thoughts on advancing the design paradigm using Autodesk Inventor. I quickly started adding how-to’s and answering Autodesk Inventor related questions for visitors, which lead to the creation of tutorials and finally my Series Tutorials.

It’s been nearly eight years now, and the hand-coded original site (pretty awesome looking in it’s day!) has long since broken as the web developed in different ways. We just didn’t have time to keep the site, so we spent a good amount of time cobbling the existing site into a stock WordPress theme — which looked lousy — but still allowed a somewhat degraded access to the Autodesk Inventor Tutorials. Read more ›