Low volume suggestions workholding / pallet for round stock on mill

[Fal Grunt]

What is your tolerance for the end stop?

It is not so much the tolerance. Originally I thought I could get away with machining the profile from the sides, ie on a tombstone, machine one end on the Y+ side, machine the profile on the Z+ side, machine the other end on the Y- side. This would let me use a small pin as a stop on the profile side, but it really needs to be done with the part standing up.

One op (doesn't matter first or second) I machine the end, facing, chamfering the OD, and machining a pocket for the drive.

The other op on the other end, I machine the face and the profile of the OD.

I'm going to have to make a better setup anyway, I knew 5 parts in the jaws were risky, and it bit me this morning. Part rotated and broke a drill, which wiped out the follow up drill. I had even made a note to myself to put a tool break detect on the first small drill this morning.

 

[DavidScott]

One easy way to make a removable stop is a bar with a step milled into it. Push the fixture up to the bar, load your parts into the fixture pushed against the bar, clamp the parts, and you are good to go. If you run 2000 parts you need to load 4000 for both ops. If you can flip your fixture instead of the parts it will save you loading, and unloading, 2000 parts. The extra hassle of putting more work into fixtures will look much better when you are halfway into the run, been there, done it. Most of my runs are over 1,000 and always repeat so I have lots of opportunities to add up the time for the different ways of making them.

 

[hi-fly-cnc]

I'm not understanding why a fixture along the lines of that in the Davidn photo isn't exactly what you need?

Make it as wide as you can. Clamp up as many items as you can.

Shove the whole lot in the vise (double if available, otherwise add more rows to the fixture to use the full vise width). Flip the whole fixture to do the B side. (His fixture isn't 2 sided, but no reason not to let the cylinders stick out of both ends?)

As long as they all stay bundled together, they are all indexed. Fixture looks inexpensive. Just some material and lots of screws.

Make several so that you can load while a batch runs? The fixture could be significantly wider than the vise of course.