Advanced Fixture Design for FMS

Book excerpt: Fixtures are crucial to new manufacturing techniques and largely dictate the level of flexibility a manufacturing system can achieve. Advanced Fixture Design for FMS provides a systematic basis for the selection and design of fixturing systems. It gives a review of the current state of the art of flexible and reconfigurable fixturing systems. Recent developments in design methodology using CAD are analysed in depth. Fixture design is seen as an inseparable part of process planning. The primary objective of a fixture system is to ensure that the part being manufactured can be made consistently within the tolerance specified in the design. A new method of tolerance analysis is used to check the suitability of location surfaces and the sequence of operations and is explained in detail.