implmex
Diamond
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2002
- Location
- Vancouver BC Canada
Good morning Everyone:
Yesterday I delivered and installed a new contraption for a customer.
It is designed to allow them to make small parts on their 5 axis setup...a Haas DT-2 with a TRT 100 Rotary on it.
So it is a fixture for holding thinner slabs of stock so they can be milled on one side, indexed 180 degrees and milled on the other side with tabs to hold the parts until the very end.
Here are some typical parts for which this fixture is designed:
Here is the stock from which some of these were cut:
Here is another from a different project for a different customer:
And its stock:
Here is the fixture mounted on the TRT 100:
So as you can see it's pretty simple in concept; a frame surrounds a 3" diameter blank of any thickness that's too thin to allow supporting it from just one edge.
It's clamped with six peripheral screws that go through the outside of a ring that allows access to the inner 2.900" of the blank's diameter and the backside is cleared away too, so you can get to both sides of the blank with a simple index.
I've wanted to try out this gadget design for years and now's my chance.
The test we ran yesterday worked like a hot damn so I was really stroking myself.
The gadget is made of ductile iron (Durabar) in the fantasy that it will absorb vibration better than steel or aluminum will.
It can be fairly heavy (about 3 1/2 pounds, because the stock that will go into it is so light and I have 15 lb total to play with on the TRT 100.
It seems to be rock solid on a 3mm thick aluminum test blank 3" diameter...the 360 degree support makes it nice and stable...no singing cutters, no drama at all, and it's very fast to set up.
I used to make this kind of stuff by bolting the slab to a frame and then flipping the frame in the vise, or else by cutting it from the top of a chunk, slicing it off and then doing side 2 in soft jaws, or cutting a thin part from a thick chunk that could tolerate edge clamping it the vise...Royal PITA.
Sometines I'd mill the features I could and then wire cut the outline...even bigger PITA.
Now I've looked all over the internet to try to find anything like this offered commercially anywhere for years, and I've had no luck.
So did I really invent something brand new?
Or is my Google-fu deficient?
Cheers
Marcus
www.implant-mechanix.com
www.vancouverwireedm.com
Yesterday I delivered and installed a new contraption for a customer.
It is designed to allow them to make small parts on their 5 axis setup...a Haas DT-2 with a TRT 100 Rotary on it.
So it is a fixture for holding thinner slabs of stock so they can be milled on one side, indexed 180 degrees and milled on the other side with tabs to hold the parts until the very end.
Here are some typical parts for which this fixture is designed:
Here is the stock from which some of these were cut:
Here is another from a different project for a different customer:
And its stock:
Here is the fixture mounted on the TRT 100:
So as you can see it's pretty simple in concept; a frame surrounds a 3" diameter blank of any thickness that's too thin to allow supporting it from just one edge.
It's clamped with six peripheral screws that go through the outside of a ring that allows access to the inner 2.900" of the blank's diameter and the backside is cleared away too, so you can get to both sides of the blank with a simple index.
I've wanted to try out this gadget design for years and now's my chance.
The test we ran yesterday worked like a hot damn so I was really stroking myself.
The gadget is made of ductile iron (Durabar) in the fantasy that it will absorb vibration better than steel or aluminum will.
It can be fairly heavy (about 3 1/2 pounds, because the stock that will go into it is so light and I have 15 lb total to play with on the TRT 100.
It seems to be rock solid on a 3mm thick aluminum test blank 3" diameter...the 360 degree support makes it nice and stable...no singing cutters, no drama at all, and it's very fast to set up.
I used to make this kind of stuff by bolting the slab to a frame and then flipping the frame in the vise, or else by cutting it from the top of a chunk, slicing it off and then doing side 2 in soft jaws, or cutting a thin part from a thick chunk that could tolerate edge clamping it the vise...Royal PITA.
Sometines I'd mill the features I could and then wire cut the outline...even bigger PITA.
Now I've looked all over the internet to try to find anything like this offered commercially anywhere for years, and I've had no luck.
So did I really invent something brand new?
Or is my Google-fu deficient?
Cheers
Marcus
www.implant-mechanix.com
www.vancouverwireedm.com
Last edited:
