- In this Fixture Friday,
I'm gonna show you how we did away with
the old approach of holding two parts in a vice
and replaced it with our Vacuum Pallet
to get 21 parts per cycle. (hard rock music)
♪ I was made for this ♪
(sharp rhythmic clapping) (low bass thumping)
(cymbal sustaining)
- So in other Fixture Friday episodes,
I've shown how we create fixtures
to leverage the principle of high-density workholding
using our Pro Pallet System. (background rock music)
Now, in other sets of videos,
I've shown you how to hold parts using our SmartVac System
that were typically impossible to hold in a vice.
But today, we're gonna combine these two product lines
to give us an easy 10 X production boost.
Let's move over to the machine, so I can show you our setup.
So what we have here is our standard Pro Pallet Base.
Now, the Pro Pallet System holds
four different sizes of pallets that we offer,
but one of the accessories is our Vacuum Pallet Kit.
I also have an introductory video of this product
that we'll link to in a card,
and also in the description below.
Now, the first operation is made on this Vacuum Pallet
that you see right here.
Now, the Vacuum Pallet Kit is nice,
because, if you're going from palletized fixtures,
you don't have to remove the PPS base
to bolt down one of our dedicated vacuum chucks
from our SmartVac product line.
The Vacuum Pallet simply locks on like other pallets.
The one thing you'll need to do
is to split the incoming compressed airline
to our vacuum power unit
and to the hand valve for the PPS base.
Now, keep in mind the PPS base uses compressed air
to unlock pallets.
There's no vacuum involved with that.
But our Vacuum Power Unit converts compressed air
to high vacuum level,
so this line goes directly into the Vacuum Pallet itself.
Now that we got that covered,
let's take a look at the part in the fixture.
So the part we're making is the nameplate
that you see in the center of our Pro Pallet System.
This part is made from aluminum tooling plate.
Now, the most common tooling plate is known as Mic 6,
but we use variations called ATP-5 or K100S.
The reason we use these is because ATP-5 and K100S
are 5,000 series aluminum alloys.
Whereas Mike six is a 7,000 series.
Now 7,000 series aluminum is much harder
and a little bit more brittle than the 5,000 series.
And these parts are threaded in the bottom,
so thread quality is a key consideration.
Plus the 5,000 series of aluminum
anodizes much more easily and brighter,
and is often used as a decorative grade of aluminum
that you sometimes see
around window sills and lighting fixtures.
Now, the great thing about this fixture
is that the starting blank size
isn't just a little bit bigger than the finished part.
It's a lot bigger.
In fact, we were able to nest 21 pieces
out of this, roughly, 10 inch by 12 inch
and quarter inch thick material.
Now for op one, we're gonna hold this work piece
on our standard grid-pattern, vacuum chuck.
And in this first operation, we're going to
drill and tap
and add these two locating holes
and do a shallow perimeter around the part
and then chamfer it.
Then we finish it off with a face mill
to bring it to its consistent thickness.
Now, we have the luxury of adding these two locating holes.
They're not used in assembly,
and they're only used to make producing these parts easier
for the second operation.
Let me show you that right now.
Now, for op two, we've machined a customizable top plate.
This top plate acts as a sacrificial surface, so that,
if you're machining below the perimeter of the part,
you get a full cleanup.
You wouldn't be machining
into the grid pattern of the chuck.
Remember, you always wanna keep that pristine
and as original as possible.
So we've customized this top plate with 21 part positions,
and we've used our 1/16 inch diameter gasket,
which is inset
from the edge of the finished part by 25 thou,
and each position has its own vacuum inlet hole.
Now, because this part is on the smaller side,
we use our 1/16 diameter gasket
to maximize the surface area exposed to the vacuum.
Remember, more surface area means higher holding force.
Now, you'll also notice these two locating bosses.
Now, these bosses will hold each part,
and give it more lateral stability.
Keep in mind that it's actually fairly rare
for a part to be lifted off a chuck.
What's more common is the cutting forces
impart lateral force sideways into the part,
and the part can slide off of the gasket,
and that's where you can have a point of failure.
So, because we've added these two bosses,
the part is located in X and Y,
and the vacuum takes care of the Z holding force.
Now in op one, you'll notice
we didn't machine all the way through,
just enough to get a good enough depth,
so that the tip of the chamfer mill doesn't do any cutting,
just the sides and just enough
to create a nice chamfered edge.
So when we flip this over,
we're flipping over 21 parts
nested together in one individual workpiece.
So handling time, which isn't usually accounted for
when we're doing these time studies,
is greatly minimized, and you can see right here
that not having to handle 21 individual parts
is a huge production boost in itself.
So, when we flip the work piece over,
all of the parts are being located individually,
using the locating bosses
and the bores on the bottom of the part,
and our vacuum holds it down.
Now, from here we're gonna use our face mill
to bring it to a final thickness,
and then we're going to use an end mill
to rough out the perimeter of the raw material.
Now we take these two higher cutting force tool paths first,
because one individual part
just doesn't have a lot of surface area,
where an oversize starting stock might cause
too much cutting force for the vacuum force
to support that one part.
So, now that we've removed the perimeter,
we can profile each of these parts,
so they're separated from each other.
Now, if there's one thing that's inefficient
about this setup, it's hand unloading
21 individual parts at the end of the cycle.
So to overcome that,
we have two identical top plates
that we rotate in and out,
so that one top plate comes off with 21 finished parts,
but we immediately grabbed the other identical top plate
with the material pre positioned on it.
Now we put it in place, turn on the vacuum,
everything gets sandwiched together, and it's ready to go.
Now, while we have the finished top plate
outside of the machine,
we can unload it and prep the next work piece.
Hey, if you know someone in the machining industry
that would benefit from these types of approaches,
do them a favor and hit that share button,
and send them a link.
And, if you ever think that
you could use this information in the future,
hit the like button,
which will save it for you for future reference
in your life videos folder on YouTube.
So until next time go innovate your production.
(rock guitar chord sustaining)