steelrides
Plastic
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2021
I'm trying to figure out a good modular fixturing system that is well-suited to one-off prototypes. I'd invest some money into a system that would allow us to be more efficient on our CNC, so I'm curious what others are using to hold work.
For background, I own an engineering R&D firm and we have a BP Series 2 3-axis CNC (among a ton of other tools for prototyping in plastic and metal) but we just haven't figured out a good way to be efficient machining complex parts. Since we're designing most of the parts we build, we can often make them simple enough for holding in a vice or minimizing the operations to one or two sides. However, I'd like to be able to better hold more complicated shapes and register 2nd, 3rd, and more operations better. We're using Solidworks and create programs in CAM rather than conversational. I've designed and built fixtures and custom soft jaws for workholding but it can take as much time as fabricating the part itself. I'm almost wondering if adding a 4th axis would be way to tackle this. Thoughts?
For background, I own an engineering R&D firm and we have a BP Series 2 3-axis CNC (among a ton of other tools for prototyping in plastic and metal) but we just haven't figured out a good way to be efficient machining complex parts. Since we're designing most of the parts we build, we can often make them simple enough for holding in a vice or minimizing the operations to one or two sides. However, I'd like to be able to better hold more complicated shapes and register 2nd, 3rd, and more operations better. We're using Solidworks and create programs in CAM rather than conversational. I've designed and built fixtures and custom soft jaws for workholding but it can take as much time as fabricating the part itself. I'm almost wondering if adding a 4th axis would be way to tackle this. Thoughts?