Turning Obstacles into Opportunities
Modular workholding delivers innovative solution for better mobile crane base build
Industry
Construction
Challenge
Throughput
Challenges
It’s a common scenario: your shop is running smoothly, staying ahead of schedule — until you hit a bottleneck at machining. That’s what was happening with this large part. It was actually being welded in a Bluco modular fixture. But because there was no proper fixture on the machining side, it had to be run through very slowly to prevent movement. If it could be fixtured to hold steady, it could be finished faster, but a new machining fixture wasn’t in the budget. It was one of those “it is what it is” situations — or so it seemed. Enter Bluco fixtuing specialists, who never pass up a chance to Make it Better.
Solution
- Existing modular welding solution
- Additional chain clamps
- Bluco fixturing expertise
After challenging themselves to use what the shop already owned, and thinking outside the box, Bluco fixturing specialists had a unique solution. Flip the part and reuse the modular welding tooling with just a few additional chain clamps to get the job done on the machining side.
Result
Fixturing the part properly for machining provided the rigidity needed speed up the machine. In addition, the part could be setup offline and set on the mill. This reduced machine downtime and also eliminated the need to assemble the fixture on the machine bed — a slippery place to work. The results were faster fixturing, more accurate results, higher throughput and a very happy machine operator.
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