Splitting pipes

[old man emu]

I am trying to split tubes so that I get lengths of tube with a type of V cut from each end, (See the picture) but I can't figure how to do it.

The idea is to be able to submit drawings to a manufacturer who can cut the ends of the pipes so they fit together for welding.

I have tried boolean difference and boolean split, but have been unsuccessful.

Can anyone give me a clue how to do it? I have attached a simple rectangle of tubes to show what I want to do.

Thanks for your help

Old Man Emu

[ahlbebuck]

Hi

See my attached file.

Firstly turn your pipes into solids. As per my layer 01
Then copy all pipes to a second layer due to parts falling away when doing boolean diff operation.

Now go back to layer 01 and select boolean difference tool. When asked to select first set of polysurfaces, select the red ones and right click ("enter"). Now select the blue surfaces as the secondary set as prompted by boolean diff tool. Then right click (enter) and the blue pipes will disappear and the red pipes will be cut. Delete the waste parts and you now have your profile.

Repeat the procedure with the spare set as in layer 02, but select the opposite pipes when doing the boolean diff.

You can now select one of each resulting cut pipes and "explode" them. The outer skin surface can now be unrolled and the resulting unfolding can be used to cut the profile on a rotary plasma cutting machine.

This works very well and I use it daily for profiling pipes to manufacture typical water pipe sections.

There are some very important small issues to fix on the resulting unfolded profile to compensate for pipe thickness as well as the fact that plasma / laser / waterjet cutting in a simple 2.5D configuration will always cut a mitre due to the line from outer surface to the centreline of the pipe.

Feel free to ask me to clarify some issues if needed.

[old man emu]

Thank you for the information.

I have one initial question:
The tubing I will be cutting is seamless. Will the procedure you suggests work if I do not want to unroll the cut tube shape?

Old man Emu