Compound Angle production Parts work holding ?

Quick question.
In my 15 years I haven't had to machine any compound angle parts, that actually needed to be held at that angles due to a tapped hole.
Any tricks to save me time?
We use double station orange vises, these are 120 part per month orders, So not a one off.
Would like to make work holding in jaws if possible?
More heads are better than 1! Ideas?

Hard to give ideas without knowing the shape. A picture perhaps?

The easy way is to put it on a 5 axis machine.

Otherwise, there are manual tilting rotaries, or make a fixture by surfacing a pocket in the appropriate orientation. Use clearance corners to accommodate sharp edges on the part.

What I do is make a fixture about the size of a soft jaw to hold the part at the first angle relative to Z. Then I machine two soft jaws with an angle to hold the first fixture at that angle.

With the fixture below, I took parts that only had a single angle and also parts that had a compound angle, and used the same clamp fixture for this operation. You could, I'm sure, use toggle clamps for speed with the volume you're talking about.

Hope this helps.





EDIT: To be clearer, I used the same fixture in normal flat jaws for the single angle parts and then the angled jaws for the compound angle parts. These went across my CMM and everything was very tight. Unfortunately can't show the parts due to an NDA but use your imagination that they were super cool.

I have cut one angle into the soft jaws and then tilted the vise for the other angle.

I don't use vises that often though. Most of my parts have compound angle features and I do them with a fixture on a 4th.

magno_grail said:

Hard to give ideas without knowing the shape. A picture perhaps?

Click to expand...

The part is literally a 2"w x 2"d x 4"h tall, block with a 3deg x 7deg. compound and a tapped hole in the middle.
As simple as it gets!

Easy peasy, then. Make a block that holds the part on one angle with simple dowel pins and toggle clamps, and hold that in a vise jaw that is cut at an angle like I pictured above. Super fast setup and teardown and parts swapping will take seconds without having to open and close vise jaws. Unless it is a large drill and tap, of course!

Then, I'd make a pair of plates cut to hold the parts at an angle, and then stick them in a pair of angled jaws like I pictured above. However, I'd also use capscrews and/or dowels to bolt/pin the plate pair to the jaws. That way you could open and close your vise and it would open and close the whole apparatus.

Thank You all for your responses.