TABLE OF CONTENTS Work Holding, Fixturing, and Machines.
How does one equip a world-class machine shop? Here the term equipment refers to work holding and fixturing and also to machines. Chapter 4: Work Holding and Fixturing describes creating fixtures that are efficient to use yet inexpensive to build and maintain are the challenges here. Chapter 5: Machines, gets at the heart of milling parts. What is the right equipment, and how important is it to have the right equipment?
When I make presentations on fixturing and work holding, I try to accomplish two objectives:
Challenge machining people to be impressively creative in the use of fixtures and attendant processes for large part milling.
Show ways to improve quality and make major improvements in flow-time, and costs of machined parts.
Fixture efficiency can be improved by using fewer fixtures, rotating the fixture, and making fixtures more rigid to reduce chatter. Reducing the chatter allows more aggressive milling. The use of dovetail fixtures on small parts allows milling on five sides of a part in one fixture. Further efficiencies can be achieved with universal fixtures that handle several part numbers. The use of tooling tabs can sometimes eliminate the need for special fixtures.
A major contributor to success by several machining suppliers is to use fewer fixtures. Fewer fixtures mean less non-recurring fixture costs, greater part accuracy, less setup time, less work in process, and...
