I'm trying to devise a more reliable way to clamp on rectangular aluminum bars on a 4th axis tombstone
I'm Running brother s1000s, 700s, 500s, and tc32s with nikken rotaries. All our machines have custom tombstones (mandrels?) with provisions for hydraulic clamping. Unfortunately none of the tombstones have breaks on the tails stocks, which I think really limits how heavy and tall the fixturing can be.
We're using custom hydraulic clamping fixtures made out of aluminum, with steel gripper inserts spaced at about 5".
The clamping force of the hydraulics have destroyed these fixtures over the course of a year, to the point that none of them clamp on center anymore, which leads to total chaos in the work offsets to get everything to line up on every side.
I was wondering if anyone has used any good off the shelf solutions, or creative custom solutions for clamping rectangular bars of material, preferably using hydraulics or pneumatics, so I don't have to rely on opporators remembering to tighten every mitee bite.
I'm Running brother s1000s, 700s, 500s, and tc32s with nikken rotaries. All our machines have custom tombstones (mandrels?) with provisions for hydraulic clamping. Unfortunately none of the tombstones have breaks on the tails stocks, which I think really limits how heavy and tall the fixturing can be.
We're using custom hydraulic clamping fixtures made out of aluminum, with steel gripper inserts spaced at about 5".
The clamping force of the hydraulics have destroyed these fixtures over the course of a year, to the point that none of them clamp on center anymore, which leads to total chaos in the work offsets to get everything to line up on every side.
I was wondering if anyone has used any good off the shelf solutions, or creative custom solutions for clamping rectangular bars of material, preferably using hydraulics or pneumatics, so I don't have to rely on opporators remembering to tighten every mitee bite.
