The fundamental components of a workholding or modular fixturing system are the tooling plates or tooling blocks, which are commonly referred to as fixture plates, grid blocks, or tombstones. The multipurpose holes (MTP holes) on both the tooling plates and blocks allow for accurate aligning or fastening of other components in a number of locations. This allows for fast and easy modifications to be made to adequately hold a work piece in place. Furthermore, the locating holes on the tooling plates can be used to connect multiple plates of varying sizes together, which allow limitless size combinations to be created.
Flex plates offer the ability to work on any given fixture away from the machine, free from any space constraints. A flex base plate resides on a machining center pallet and will accept other flex tooling plates or blocks to be fastened onto it, which allows for fast changeover between applications. The two tapered pins allow for accurate and consistent locating when mounting other flex plates to the base.
A few of the immediate benefits from using a flex plate modular fixturing system include:
- Fast and accurate changeover
- Flexible mounting of a single fixture on different machines
- Machining a part from 5 sides on a single pallet
- Reduced setup time compared to other conventional methods
All tooling plates and blocks are held to tight dimensional and geometric tolerances and manufactured to a high level of quality and reliability.