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IH CNC & Machinery
57 South Street
New Britain, CT 06051
Phone: 860-832-8285
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Making a Fixture Part 1
Making a Fixture PT1 |
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| A fixture is simply one piece material that is used to hold other material while being machined. It is not magical, it is not difficult, but if you produce a lot of parts it is required. Making our parts simply by bolting material to the table would be impossible, but by using a fixture we are able to have huge production gains.
Now of course we put a few more bucks into making a fixture than most of our customers, but you can use similar techniques using extruded 6061 and save quite a bit of money. Also there is no law saying the fixture has to be so big. It can easily be just a small portion of the table. Also, fixture pins are great with fixtures, but not required. Without them getting the fixture back in the same place is tough, but doable. |
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We have a tackle box with all the necessary items to make a fixture.
In the box you will find:
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For fixture material we use aluminum jig and fixture plate, we had an entire sheet cut into 12" x 36" x 1" slabs.
Since they are all the same size and we know we want the fixture centered in the travels we made these stops. They fit in the front Tee-slot and are used only when the fixture is getting setup. |
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Pulled up against the stop. |
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The fixture is centered.
Our fixtures are 6" longer than the X axis travel, this gives us 3" on each side clamps and such. |
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Because the fixture is so big, the X axis edges are outside the reach of the machine. So we manually drill and tap some holes into the table edges so we can clamp these down. |
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The plate is now secure, and pretty much centered.
We are saying centered within .025" tolerance is not critical until the patterns are cut into the plate. |
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While pinning the table we noted the insert and guide locations.
We drill 2 locating holes. 1/4" pins, undersized 1/4" holes. Although our table has 10 guide locations we usually use just 2 per fixture. We choose 2 of the most outside ones. |
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Ream the holes. |
| Go To Making A Fixture Part 2 | |