Hydraulic Workholding Yields High Accuracy for Machined Castings

摘要

Southland CNC of Cornelia, Georgia is a Tier Two supplier of automotive components to domestic and transplant automakers - primarily sand-cast aluminum parts. Established 19 years ago with a single machine in president/owner Keith Armour's garage, it now has 30 employees using 21 high-capacity machining centers. Southland machines various parts, including some production runs of very high volumes, and others of relatively low volume. It uses dedicated hydraulic clamping fixtures on Okuma Howa vertical machining centers for its high-volume production runs, because these fixtures decrease production time significantly, which makes the fixturing highly cost-effective. The dedicated hydraulic fixtures also provide clamping pressure that is consistent and repeatable, which improves machining accuracy.