Zone: Workholding

Get Better Before You Get Bigger

indexer Rather than making a major new machine tool purchase just yet, this shop is finding additional capacity on the equipment it already has. What once was a vertical machining center will become a flexible automated production center for unattended machining.

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Hydraulic Workholding Devices Allow Total-Perimeter Machining
8/20/2008 Modern Machine Shop: Having access to the entire perimeter of a part minimizes set ups because shops can machine five sides of the part in one fixturing. This enables shops to reduce the total number of manufacturing operations, the number of times parts must be handled, the potential for part damage due to excessive handling and the o
Specialty Company Knows Its Collets
8/18/2008 Production Machining: For almost 3 years Mr. Bouchard struggled with a machine application designed to produce life-critical airbag parts for Arrow Machine’s primary client in the automotive industry. With the help of RH Collets, a manufacturer of specialty workholding and related components for Hydromats and other machinery, Mr. Bouchard is solving the problem—not with one new part but with a series of solutions.
Economies Of Scale
6/22/2008 Modern Machine Shop: Medical implant work is not just small in terms of workpiece sizes. Lot sizes and lead times can also be small when the product is still under development. To compete for implant work, this shop aims to offer cost savings in the face of all of this smallness.
Attracted To A Better Way
5/29/2008 Modern Machine Shop: Modular, magnetic workholding blocks have changed the way this shop approaches the machining of both large and small workpieces. The blocks’ portability allows them to be used on a variety of different machines. Their flexibility often eliminates the need to create custom fixtures.
No Need For Speed
3/20/2008 Modern Machine Shop: In this shop, high speed machining makes sense at 4,000 rpm. While the disciplines the shop put in place made a new 15,000-rpm profiler dramatically more productive, high speed machining would have remained valuable even if the new machine never came. A co-owner of this shop describes why high speed machining has....

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Overview Of:
Workholding

Workholding refers to any device that is used to a secure a workpiece and hold it in place against the forces of machining. The most basic workholding device is a simple clamp that is screwed into place on a machining center’s table, but workholding can also involve complex fixtures that are custom-built for particular parts. Other common workholding devices include vises and chucks, as well as indexers or rotary tables that are able to change the part’s position while it is held, so the machine can reach various features of the part without the setup having to be changed.

In most machining applications, workholding also locates the part. In turning, for example, a chuck not only holds the part securely but also holds it precisely on the centerline of the spindle. On a machining center, the vise or fixture that holds the part may also hold it in the precise position and orientation where the machining program expects to find it. For this reason, components such as locating pins and workstops that make it easy to place piece after piece in the same location are also common workholding components.