As explained in Guiding Devices, you can define one or more guiding devices. A guiding device can be a conveyor belt, or a conveyor roller or a roller conveyor, or a calibrator. A conveyor belt is represented as a plane and is defined by means of a conveniently selected point and a vector normal to the plane in the outward direction; a translation velocity is also specified. A rotating roller is represented as a cyl- inder and is defined by a radius and an oriented axis passing through a given point; a rotation velocity around the axis is also specified. A conveyor roller is represented as a series of rollers and is defined as a rotating roller, radius, oriented axis, rotations velocity) in addition to the number of identical rollers and the distance between two successive instances. Eventually, a calibrator or a calibrator element is a 3D geometric object made of finite elements and already incorporated as an additional subdomain into the finite element mesh file used for the extrusion flow analysis. Evolution functions and time-dependent functions cannot be defined on these quantities.
The definition of a guiding device does not implicitly involve its usage. Its usage must be explicitly specified by you as part of the setting of a free surface boundary condition, as explained in General Procedure.
The various steps for defining a guiding device are as follows:
In the menu for the task, select Define guiding devices.
Define guiding devicesHere, you can modify global parameters of an existing guiding device (change the type, the title or delete it), create a new guiding device or modify the parameters of an existing guiding device.
Select Create a new guiding device; its creation can be based on a copy of a previously defined device.
Create a new guiding device.For defining a conveyor belt, select the type Conveyor belt.
conveyor beltand enter its title (or name). A belt is defined as a plane. Successively enter the coordinates of a point as well as the outward direction for defining the plane of the belt, and enter the translation velocity.
For defining a rotating roller, select the type single roller.
single rollerand enter its title (or name). A single roller is defined as a cylinder. Successively enter the radius, the coordinates of a point passing through the axis of the cylinder, the direction of the axis, and enter also the (signed) angular velocity of the roller around the axis.
For defining a series of conveyor rollers, select the type roller conveyor.
roller conveyorand enter its title (or name). A single roller is defined as a cylinder. A roller conveyor is a series of rollers. Specify the number of rollers, define the first roller of the series as a single roller by entering its radius, the coordinates of a point of its axis, the direction of the axis and the (signed) angular velocity of the roller around its axis and, finally, specify the distance between two successive rollers of the series. This distance is defined as the translation vector moving a roller onto the next one in the series. The norm of this vector is thus the distance between the axis of two successive rollers.
For defining a calibrator, select the type calibrator.
calibratorand enter its title (or name). A calibrator is defined by means of finite elements, and is already incorporated as an additional subdomain into the finite element mesh file used for the extrusion flow analysis. Specify the domain as well as the surface of contact. Specify also an initial displacement (translation) if you want to adjust the position of the calibrator with respect to the die.