Point Suction problem

[Lars Egerrup / LKE Design]

Hi there,

I am making a point suction device for a lab environment.

The setup:
The device consists of a number of pipes assembled by some elbow joints, and a start bushing and some various ends.
I have made it so that it follow a path giving the length and the angles of the entire device. in all joints is an elbow joint.
The elbow joint is a round cup and the pipes are sticking into this. I haven't made any holes for the pipes in the joints as this would unnecessarily complicate things a whole lot.
To handle the pipes Z position (the pipes is offset to each other by a little more than the double of their radius). I have made a macro that put the pipe alternately on each side of the path,by checking if the segment is even or uneven.

Now to the problem.
Since the elbow joints are round, I need to stick the pipes into the joints center, - otherwise there will be gaps. I have set the bevel to none  - so that  it doesn't extend the pipes,  which especially will be bad where the angle between the pipes is very narrow.
I have given the pipes padding values for left and right, so that they extend into the elbow joint . BUT it doesn't do it at the end segments and the distance into the elbow joint varies???!!!

What do I do wrong and are there a way to get around this?

I have attached some screendumps so you can see my setup.

If you look at the front view - you can see the problem with the pipes.

[Rokas]

I have read the thread multiple times. Unfortunately I can't find where the issues is.

[Lars Egerrup / LKE Design]

The issue is, that the pipes doesn't extend correct into the elbow. The first and the last pipe doesn't extend at all, and the other doesn't extend with a predictable distance.

Fx. you can see in my settings (rcPointSuction Problem - rcEditor02.png) that I have set the padding to -1 cm - but you can see on the two units that it for sure isn't going 1 cm in, - but worse it goes differently!! On the big one it goes all the way to the center of the elbow on the small one, it just goes slightly in. The diameter of the elbow is 8,45 cm.

[Lars Egerrup / LKE Design]

Still difficult to understand???