Survey - Do You Use Keyed Sub-plates and/or Vises?

I often use dowell pins in the t-slots to get the subplate close to square and snug it before dialing it in and final clamp.

Comments: using keys leads to relying on keys, which means not not doing a simple thing like checking which means eventually you are going to have to explain why and go back to not using keys. Not an experience I want to have.

We have some long vacuum fixtures (54 inches is the shortest one) that we use to cut all kinds of parts on. These are keyed to the tables. Everything else gets dialed in straight. We cut molds and other hard precision parts in vises or on tables. We cut foam cores and other less-precision stuff on the vacuum fixtures.

It doesn't take long enough to dial a vise straight to put up with the "little-bit-off" one can achieve with a keyed vise.

Later,

Charlie

They're a pain in the backside

[X] No.

[X] No.

Is to easy to get debris underneath and not be able to "feel" it during setups when using keys.

BottleBob wrote in news:tvGdnfrI6dA0fj_UnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

[X ] No.

Usually something that will lose money. Have been known to break even at least twice.

[X ] No.

I most of the time work on DMU100 with rotating table and a probe so it only takes two points with the probe ant table adjusts to 0.

It only takes a minute to indicate a single vise and if you need more you get into a problem as some people touched up few jaws on the grinder and they are not all thew same.

BottleBob wrote in news:tvGdnfrI6dA0fj_UnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

almosg anything that comes in the door/

Half our work is large castings that are turned on a vtl. Some smaller castings turned on a cnc lathe. misc stuff done on a 4 axis vmc's and hmc's

V blocks with keys. mostly for keywaying long shafts.

We use subplates set to pallet edge stops.

Juhn

Aluminum 6061 and a handfull of tiny brass widgets

If it takes someone more than 2-1/2 minutes to indicate a vise then time get on down the road I hear Foster Farms needs more chicken chokers.

I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that BottleBob wrote on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:58:06 -0800 in alt.machines.cnc :

The whole table is one large plate, with a "god hole" and various pin locations. Vises have pins which align them all the same. In theory.

Aerospace.

Yes. makes repeatability on operations a bit easier to accomplish without having to hire real machinists.

Most of the stuff is "plug and play". Fortunately the foreman would make me dial in the deck now and then, so I at least learned what it was I was suppose to know.

pyotr

-- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

We use dowel pins alot, particularly on our Haas VM-3SS with the Mold Making table (tee slots both directions plus precision holes for dowel pins in each "island" between the slots. I indicate when precision demands, and use the probe for a quick check.

Research, robotics, automotive, manufacturing

The shop has them but I don't trust them-I indicate everything anyways.

Just came across this on the PM site. It may be of interest to our money players.

For PM thread see Any of our money players using this type of modular fixturing and with what results?

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).