Professional Digital Machinist - Right Tool, Right Job: Dedicated Fixture Plates Can help to Pad the Bottom Line

摘要

The bread and butter of a small shop are those contract jobs that keep coming back every few months - a couple of parts here, a few dozen additional parts there, and so on. Since you've already put the up-front effort into part programming with the first unit, your effort is substantially reduced for every additional part thereafter -or at least that's the idea. The key to success with these jobs is setup. Robust, repeatable fixturing is essential to being able to make something exactly the same way every time, and with minimal additional effort. The de facto choice for part fixturing in the small shop is the vise. A machinist vise is kind of like the combination wrench in your toolbox of fixturing techniques - it can be used to hold on to a lot of different sizes and shapes. Like the combination wrench, the vise's strength as a tool is in its versatility. Machinists are very comfortable using the vise and adapting it to just about any job, and that approach works fine for one-offs and two-offs.