Autodesk Fusion 360 Tutorial: Mastering Living Hinges for Laser Cutting

[@attilah]

Mind blown, like how you simplified a complex problem into small simple pieces!

[@WhatMakeArt]

Thanks, hopefully your laser cut doesn't end up in a bunch of little pieces with all the thin cuts 👍

[@matiasgoinheix366]

That trick with the symmetric construction lines to center the sketch was awesome. Great video.

[@WhatMakeArt]

Glad it helped, geometry tricks are fun 👍

[@andresmonagas7662]

Incredibly good tutorial. This definitely deserves more views

[@WhatMakeArt]

👍

[@pierregarat4729]

Thank you so much ! I'm a complete beginner to fusion 360 and I was able to follow along ! This is going to help me so much because I'm designing a casing for an IoT project and I need to use living hinges.

[@WhatMakeArt]

Sounds like an exciting project, hope the living hinge goes well 👍

[@pierregarat4729]

@@WhatMakeArtThank you !! That’s a school project, I need to create a fully functional weather station : - microcontroller with sensors - database + backend to retrieve and store the data - frontend to nicely display the data And I decided to use plywood and a laser cutter to create the box for my device, I wanna shape it like a cloud ☁️ so the front and back will be cloud shaped wood sheets, linked together with livings hinges, do you think it’s doable ?

[@WhatMakeArt]

@pierregarat4729 sounds epic,☁️🌥️ That sounds ambitious, but definitely possible, post a link to some pictures when it's done 👍

[@pierregarat4729]

Hi I tried to send some pictures through a link but the comment got removed

[@WhatMakeArt]

Thanks for trying, you can also send to [e-mail]

[@longphan2865]

Very great tutorial. Thank you :D

[@WhatMakeArt]

Welcome, glad it helped 👍

[@PhilippPosovszky]

Great one, i learned really a lot about fusion

[@WhatMakeArt]

👍

[@thegeekeryuk]

This was so helpful. I found that the lines that you extended past the edge of the board didn't do anything in my design so I removed them leaving only the central cut.

[@WhatMakeArt]

Glad it helped, the lines extending past the border are only in case the laser cutter doesn't cut everything, it's kind of like a through cut / release cut on a bandsaw, if your laser cutter cuts perfectly within the kerf then there's no need to have the lines extend past and it will save work Glad you got some bendy wood now 👍

[@catalinmarcelionescu8902]

At 8:03 you say there is a downside were you have to type that value every time you change the model. If you go to Model Parameters - under User Defined Parameters ( you can find that value as a dimension name (eg. d50)). As long as you don't change (as in delete/recreate) the driven dimension, you can use the name of that dimension in you your expression. I believe Fusion will recalculate your expression even if your design will change (increase plywood thickness, overall dimensions and so on). To my knowledge, all dimensions will be given a default name by Fusion (driven or user defined). Also at the beginning of the video where you define the gap, instead of entering a value for the second gap, you could have clicked the first gap dimension (these is a good practice if you don't have different gaps). Other than that, nice video.

[@WhatMakeArt]

Thanks for the tip. I don't think driven dimensions worked at the time I made this video but driven dimensions are a great new feature in Fusion 360.I think they are still locked to a single sketch and can't be used in different sketches, but driven dimensions are a better way to have the calculation happen automatically.

[@catalinmarcelionescu8902]

@@WhatMakeArt May be wrong, but i believe you can use any dimension "name" (the one given by Fusion) from any sketch into any other sketch. Not really sure what you meant.

[@WhatMakeArt]

Yes you are correct about using Fusion 360's names for parameters in different sketches I was referring to the driven dimensions as discussed here kzbin.info/www/bejne/e36UYn2uqbWVoNk

[@Algardraug]

I thought of this as well! You can also change the driven dimension name from e.g. d50 to anything you'd like, so in this case "hingeheight" :)

[@WhatMakeArt]

@Algardraug this is a great suggestion. Thanks for sharing 👍

[@bobcole268]

Great tutorial. I dont know if you can help but I am trying to form a tapered cylinder with living hinge. The sizes are the base circle is 80mm dia and the top is 60mm diawith a length of 300mm. Any idea how? A video would be great

[@WhatMakeArt]

I would try making a living hinge pattern on an arc path. Look up the formula for a truncated cone online, use it to make the arc and then experiment with hinge cut pattern spacing on that arc

[@bobcole268]

Thanks for that I will give it a try

[@SamBatti88]

Hi, thank you for this great tutorial. at the 12:45, which command do you used to select all lines faster ?

[@WhatMakeArt]

It's a drag select, if you drag from the left, it selects any entity it touches, if you drag from the right, it only selects entities that are fully inside the selection, up in the top menu where there is select right click on that menu and then make sure that you have the option to Windows, select or draw select

[@SamBatti88]

@@WhatMakeArt is there a formula to calculate the number of lines in the same line depending of the object width ? Maybe is there a perfect line length to use ?

[@WhatMakeArt]

They're probably is but I don't know it, I would have to do some tests and then see if there is a relationship through experiment

[@SamBatti88]

@@WhatMakeArt thank you :) if you found a way, it will be great to share that on a small video !

[@SamBatti88]

I found that, I’ll analyze the code and come back with the formula ;)

[@wolframherzog636]

Excellent 🙋‍♂️👍

[@WhatMakeArt]

Thank you 👍

[@davidgruty]

what is the K factor? what value to choose? Or, is it important? one could directly choose steel and not even create a new material

[@WhatMakeArt]

K factor is based on the deformation of a material at a certain thickness and bend radius, for rolling or bending steel with precision it is important, but for using the Fusion 360 sheet metal feature for laser cutting living hinges it can be ignored

[@paulogomezdiaz319]

Hi, how could I do the same procees but in Inventor Professional 2021... I´m trying but I cant... thanks for you help.

[@WhatMakeArt]

I am not familiar with Inventor, but you can likely make similar sketch constraints or other parameters that would work the same way.

[@phobicdotno]

Mind.Blown :D

[@WhatMakeArt]

🧠🤯💥

[@fabbri4497]

On the edge of the curved panel we see trapezoids whereas we have cut rectangles...

[@WhatMakeArt]

Did you figure out the issue?