SheetMetal Hem or Hemming

Welcome to SolidWorks Tutorials for beginners and in this sheetmetal tutorial series, you are going to see how to use the solidworks sheetmetal hem feature. This feature is one of the useful and having several applications in sheet metal designing and manufacturing process. Before going to tutorial, you should know about hemming and its applications.

What is SolidWorks Sheetmetal Hem?

In your engineering studies (manufacturing process), you learned about Hemming forming operation. Hem feature helps to fold or bend back metal parts edges itself. It is basically used in sheetmetal forming process to make the edges smooth and enhances the appearance of the formed product. It can be used for fastening two sheetmetal sections together and improves the stiffness of the plates.

In SolidWorks, there are certain conditions can Hem feature applied and are:-

• It can be applied on the linear edges

• All selected edges should be on same face.

• When you do the hem, mitered corners are automatically applied to the corners of the sheet metal

Let us start the step by step tutorial.

How to Apply Sheet metal Hem

Step 1: Open SolidWorks New Part File

Open SolidWorks and create new Part file. Then select any default plane (e.g. Top plane) and apply “Normal To” view.

Step 2: Insert Base Flange Sheet Metal to Part File

Go to “Insert” menu, select “Sheet Metal” from drop down menu and select “Base Flange” from side drop down menu.

Insert -> Sheet Metal -> Base Flange

Step 3: Create Sketch for Base Flange

You have to create one base flange for applying hem feature.

Select the “Rectangle sketch tool” from the sketch command manager and draw rectangle as shown below.

Click on “Exit The Sketch” button and will direct to base flange interface and automatically convert rectangle to sheetmetal plate.

Here, you have to enter the sheetmetal parameters as you like.

Step 4: Apply Hem Feature

Here, will show how to apply different types of hem features in the Hem property manager.

Go to Insert -> Sheetmetal -> Hem

You have to select the “edges” where you want to apply hem feature. It is shown below.

It have two options such as “material Inside and bend outside”.

Here select “material Inside” and see how it works.

Also select “bend outside” and see below image.

There are four types and different sizes of hem.

They are Closed, Open, Tear drop and Rolled types.

1. Closed Hem

Select the edges and select the “closed” type from the hem property manager.

You can adjust the size of the hem too.

2. Open Hem

3. Tear Drop Hem

4. Rolled Hem

This is the way to use SolidWorks Sheetmetal hem feature.

Read more about hemming in manufacturing process by click here