quick pallet change

hy folks

We are trying to change our selfmade "fixture plates" to get quicker load times.
situation now is we have 2solid bloks of steel left and right on the table. on this we mount a fixture plate (selfmade) centered with 4pins and we bolt these from the upper side.

now we would like to change the clamping. if now we have to put the plate on the table we cant load the plate with parts BEFORE loading the plate on the machine becouse of the bolts that go in on top. (first bolts,than parts)
i am looking for other ways to clamp the fixtureplate. thinking of making sort of cam lock but not shure if it would give enough "pull" to the plate to get a steady machinig ground.

would like to hear your ideas

If I had the quantity to justify cost I'd be looking at hydraulic clamps.
Unlock and swing away for maximum clearance and holding power.

Cams can be great, but can get in the way and loosen if not careful.

You've got a bunch of options, but here are some questions that might guide things:

- What size are these fixture plates?
- Are they aluminum? Steel? D2?
- How many sets of pallets do you have?
- What kind of budget do you have for new fixtures?
- Is this machine production dedicated? Or do you want to maintain a lot of overall flexibility?
- Hydraulics.... set up for them with the power unit and comfort with dealing with all the plumbing?
- Finally, are we talking "Quick" because you want to have two identical pallets, and hot swap them out of the machine so you can load one pallet offline while the other is under the spindle, or is "Quick" about going from one job to another?

Can you move the bolt hole locations in your fixture plate and "blocks" to not interfere with your parts? There must be SOME room on that fixture plate...? You could even have several different drilled and tapped holes in your "blocks" for the different locations of your bolt holes in your fixture plates. I have had great success with Jergens Ballocks if you want to tighten your fixture plate down to your "block" quickly.

We only do parts in 2,000 plus and almost all use fixture plates. I have shelves full of 'beta versions'. Many have very short cycle times, some can take 17 hours for a pallet of parts. For the money and speed there is just no way to beat the Pierson Workholding pallets. We have and love our Orange Vises but they are not ideal at all for frequent pallet changing. Occasional and use as vise they are AMAZING. For quick cycles or heavy pallets the Pierson Workholding is 20-30 seconds to open door, swap out a 10"x16" pallet, close the door and hit cycle start. You can make your own pallets, but at $200 for their largest pallet it's not worth it for us.

We actually use the mini pallets in the 6"x10" config since our fixtures are 2.25" tall and 65% steel by volume. Any bigger we can't lift them, so 3 Pierson Mini Pallets on the Brother S700s and we can swap all THREE in under a minute which can get us up to a 98%+ machine time per day on some cycles.

You can daisy chain the fixtures or run each with it's own valve. We daisy chain so I pull one plunger and all three pallets lift up and ready to pull out. The mini doesn't have the seal around the outside so we do have to spray them off between cycles and wipe the bottom of the fixture. Changing our parts out of the fixtures takes 30 minutes... 3-4 times a day they literally paid for themselves in the first month, now it's all profit.

PriddyShiddy said:

We actually use the mini pallets in the 6"x10" config since our fixtures are 2.25" tall and 65% steel by volume. Any bigger we can't lift them, so 3 Pierson Mini Pallets on the Brother S700s and we can swap all THREE in under a minute which can get us up to a 98%+ machine time per day on some cycles.

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Your pallets are aluminum? Do you have any trouble taking heavy (well, for a Speedio) cuts with the Mini Pallet?

gkoenig said:

Your pallets are aluminum? Do you have any trouble taking heavy (well, for a Speedio) cuts with the Mini Pallet?

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I can't fairly attest to that. 70% of my machine time is sub 0.02" tipped tooling at 27K RPM. I could see heavy machining cause vibration on the mini since it has only the two 'pads' it sits on. The larger one has 4 'pads' and two ball locks and I think it would handle most things that could be thrown at it. I have some pallets that we run across three standard vises and can push on the 1.25" fixture with 2.5" overhang and get .002" deflection (accumulated). With the largest pallets on the Pierson I can only see 0.0005" movement with me bouncing on the edge of it. Poor maintenance could definitely add error if you let a chip under a pad though. We've left our 'chips' and they are embedded in the aluminum now from the pull down force. They are flush and the fixture is still flat so there was no harm, but we have tweezers and lighted eye loupes at every machine... our chips most call splinters.