Why use modular tooling plates?

Why use modular tooling plates?
A number of vendors sell them...Carr Lane for one.
Here's an example.
Rectangular Tooling Plates – Standard (24" x 32") | Carr Lane

under what circumstances would this be a better bet than a t slot table.
Clearly they have specific reasons to exist...they are made and sold after all.
But why?

Easy reinstalation of reusable fixturing comes to mind.
As does off line part loading and swaps.

But for the short run...or singles are they meaningful?

Miguels244 said:

Why use modular tooling plates?
A number of vendors sell them...Carr Lane for one.
Here's an example.
Rectangular Tooling Plates – Standard (24" x 32") | Carr Lane

under what circumstances would this be a better bet than a t slot table.
Clearly they have specific reasons to exist...they are made and sold after all.
But why?

Easy reinstalation of reusable fixturing comes to mind.
As does off line part loading and swaps.

But for the short run...or singles are they meaningful?

Click to expand...

We have some on our HBM's that are about 96"x84", use em so when guys do the butterfingers routine, the wrench/block/whatever doesn't need leave a crater.

On our small mill we keep 1 that has vises loaded on and another with the 4th axis

Not sure about that particular unit but I have a Chick fixture plate, a System 5 Quik-Lok kit. It has two little indexing posts you can put anywhere on the table and plop a vise down on. Guaranteed .0006 repeatability over 20". I can move vises around, take them on and off in minutes, put them in different spots for different jobs and know that I have a "qualified" setup not requiring hours of setup, indicating, and resetting of the part zero for the work offsets.

Also the top of each hole is a hardened and ground 12mm insert so you can drop in dowels and again have a dead accurate locator, fence, or whatever in no time at all. I do have a Kurt DX6 as my knock around vise as it's vastly cheaper than the two Chick ones. I loathe taking it off as I know I will have to indicate it back in and fuss around when I put it back. No matter how good you are at indicating, you aren't as fast as just bolt/unbolt with repeatable accuracy.

That said, unless you can find a setup used like I did the price is very high. The correct fixture plate for my machine, Doosan DNM5700, was quoted at $4700. Vises are about $2k each which isn't too far out of line with others at that level. But the ease of use, and if you aren't a one man show, the ability to just change jobs and have a setup sheet showing the vise location (they have letters/numbers for each row) that any operator can just put them on and not screw up is fantastic.

So not cheap, and not for everyone, but if you have a use they are fantastic.

Chick Workholding Solutions | One-Lok, Qwik-Lok, Multi-Lok, Foundations, Indexable Workholding and More | Product Selector

The above two posts are right on the money. I imagine other folks with experience in bigger shops, especially those heavy on CNC machines, will have some additional good input. As far as your question about using in short run or singles situations, that is what I do and it makes a lot of sense for me. I use one on my manual horizontal mill table; I have 6 different fixtures that I use to machine tubes for one assembled product (slotting, coping, slitting, cross drilling, reaming, etc). The issue with repeatability was that for any given finished assembly, each fixture has to accomodate 4-5 possible ODs, lengths, angles and so on, and they are not consistent end product to end product. Also, some fixtures are small and others large.

Using a fixture plate combined with a DRO, I made a chart that tells me where to locate each fixture on the plate, and then where to position the table. Regardless of OD, length, etc, I get reliable work and it saves the time of having to indicate each fixture on the table, and then indicate the mounted fixture to the spindle.

I found mine used for cheap. I would not have the need nor would it make financial sense to purchase a new fixture plate system, but for many people it does. But for a one person shop making many variations of one product, a used set-up works well for me. I would eventually like to set-up a few other fixture plates on my surface plate for inspection purposes, but that is a project that will take awhile.

Long story short = Versatility

I use stevens subplates. I have their modular vises that allows me to hold 20" long stock without clamps. I have their angle plates and parallels plus my own tooling plates that hold a Pierson pallet system and 2 Kurt vises. It is a huge time saver.