Vacuum Hold Down for Repetitive Shapes
Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 10:23 pm
I was requested for more info on the vacuum jigs we are using for repetitive parts. I'm pretty new at this, so take with a grain of salt. This is shown on another machine, but it's machine agnostic.
At my day job, I'm senior photographer and hack fabricator. I develop product holding fixtures for when we have to cycle through thousands of one type of product (fans, lights, door knobs, etc). We got this big nice 5x8 table a little over a year ago with a vacuum spoil board setup. It's nice for sheet goods down to 2x4' zones, but once the parts hit a certain size, tabs are a must, especially stuff that likes to climb the bit like polycarbonate.
But when we are making 100s of something in a run, cleaning off 100s times 3 or 4 tabs is a real pain. So I started developing vacuum jigs to hold everything down for full through cuts, no tabs. This wouldn't be necessary if the assemblers didn't treat the fixtures like disposables as I make them to last forever, but I'm glad for the opportunity to learn something new.
The first was a test run. I sealed the MDF as best I could with multiple coats of poly inside and out, but even with aluminum tape around the edges, it's still not as strong as it could be. However, it works. I chose this one because of the relatively large surface area being vacuumed (you'll see why in the other example). Leakage wasn't nearly the factor with this much area. Here is the assembled test jig.
At my day job, I'm senior photographer and hack fabricator. I develop product holding fixtures for when we have to cycle through thousands of one type of product (fans, lights, door knobs, etc). We got this big nice 5x8 table a little over a year ago with a vacuum spoil board setup. It's nice for sheet goods down to 2x4' zones, but once the parts hit a certain size, tabs are a must, especially stuff that likes to climb the bit like polycarbonate.
But when we are making 100s of something in a run, cleaning off 100s times 3 or 4 tabs is a real pain. So I started developing vacuum jigs to hold everything down for full through cuts, no tabs. This wouldn't be necessary if the assemblers didn't treat the fixtures like disposables as I make them to last forever, but I'm glad for the opportunity to learn something new.
The first was a test run. I sealed the MDF as best I could with multiple coats of poly inside and out, but even with aluminum tape around the edges, it's still not as strong as it could be. However, it works. I chose this one because of the relatively large surface area being vacuumed (you'll see why in the other example). Leakage wasn't nearly the factor with this much area. Here is the assembled test jig.