WORKHOLDING
“It’s fl ip fl opping, 30% will be standard off the shelf and 70% will be something you have to design for the customer,” he said. “You’re providing an engineered solution to a cus- tomer’s needs.” Workholding, like other segments of manufacturing, also
is being affected by increased use of materials that are more diffi cult to machine and cut. “Workholding design and build integrity has had to evolve as the use of titanium, Inconel and other hard to machine, abrasive materials are now mainstream materials, especially in aerospace applications,” said James F. Woods, president of Hainbuch America (Germantown, WI).
“Consistent clamping and the ability to hold parts more
securely to achieve tighter tolerances without sacrifi cing the ability to optimize machining feeds and speeds or to change
The advent of more sophisticated production machines,
such as fi ve-axis machines, also is a factor. Cutting tools have access to fi ve sides of a workpiece. With fi ve-axis machines, “This challenge required work- holding manufacturers to come up with new designs that were different than the standard vise that most shops have been using,” said David Fisher, a founder of Raptor Work- holding Products (Burbank, CA) and a former owner of the company. “The workholding has to be rigid, yet because of fi ve-axis machining of more complex shapes, the fi xture has to be less bulky so that it is not in the way of the tools.” That’s a trend that executives at workholding companies expect to continue. “You’ve got machines that have nine axes now,” said Robbins of SMW Autoblok. “You will fi nd machines get smarter and smarter and ma- chines get faster and faster.” What follows is a look at how some companies are addressing the increased demand on workholding equipment.
More Engineers Kurt Manufacturing’s TOPlus in action.
over quickly is an interesting demand in today’s manufactur- ing environment,” he said. “Today’s machining centers are capable of faster travel speeds and fi ner accuracies,” Woods added. “Cutting tool design has also afforded customers the ability to machine more aggressively, removing more material faster than ever before. Workholding must be able to hold parts more se- curely and with better consistency to maximize the benefi t of these advances.”
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AdvancedManufacturing.org | February 2016
SMW Autoblok boosted its engineering capabilities. “We went from one or two engineers,” Robbins said. “We went to nine engineers. We needed to become a manufacturing company. We were just a distribution company in the past. We just imported in the past.” Autoblok Corp. was start- ed in 1981 as a subsidiary of Italy’s Autoblok, a power
chuck maker. In 1993, Autoblok acquired and combined with Germany company SMW.
The US unit of SMW Autoblok now works more closely with customers. More frequently, SMW customizes products for a buyer.
“The customer wants to invest less and less,” Robbins said. “They expect the vendor to do more.” Part of the company’s product line are the SJL-C and SJL-M specialty chucks, which have size ranges of 225–400
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