Track: Design and Analysis

Abstract

A general practice in manufacturing industry, especially in machine shops, is to design and develop a dedicated jig or fixture for a single operation. The scope of dedicated fixturing has become challenging due to the need of improvisation of adjustability as well as to incorporate a range of production operations. Usually, few machining operations are performed on conventional fixtures i.e. vices for the rectangular work parts, and additional attachments are used to incorporate cylindrical work which increase the workholding time, the cost as well as the limitation of variability of dimensions. Furthermore, if the size of the work is small (slender or thin sheets) then it imposes the difficulty in fixturing. To perform several manufacturing operations (machining, joining, and welding etc.) on prismatic as well as cylindrical parts, each operation needs to have a dedicated fixture which may not be useable for a new part or the part with varying dimensions. These fixturing issues are addressed through the use of modular kits or custom CNC machined. There are many simple applications, especially in case of light duty manufacturing operations like riveting, adhesive bonding, and inspection of machined features etc. In simple applications the use of modular kits and specialized fixtures are not the preferred choice with respect to economic reasons. Therefore, a multi-purpose fixture has been designed and presented in this study. The fixture design is verified through the fabrication of its parts and their assembly. The applicability and repeatability of the multi-functional fixture is validated through different experimental case studies including the inspection of hole quality, examination of microstructure through mini-microscope, drilling, and milling operations.