One Custom Workholding Fixture. 43 Parts. Up To 30% Faster.

Challenges

Purchasing new manufacturing machinery alone isn’t always the sole solution to production challenges. This was the case for one manufacturer who bought a new boring machine to speed up production of pivot arms used to attach tillers to tractors.

Fortunately, they were proactive. They worked with Bluco and the boring machine manufacturer to equip the machine with a Bluco modular U-form as the base. So modular fixtures were definitely compatible. The real challenge was creating custom workholding fixtures to weld 43 different pivot arms on this single machine.

Bridging the Engineering Gap

Despite having an in-house engineering team, our customer knew that custom workholding fixture designs could be handled more efficiently by Bluco’s modular experts. So they engaged with us to provide Engineering Design Services.

Our team’s first task was to determine the most efficient way to approach the 43 separate modular fixture designs. We started with the four most unique parts in order to identify the base collection of modular components needed. Once that was done, the customer was able to begin modular production and train their staff, while we set to work on the rest of the modular fixture designs.

Projected X-Factor Improvement

Bluco’s engineers were able to complete the additional 37 workholding fixture designs by adding only a handful of additional components. This minimized the customer’s additional expenses, and maximized their ROI — not to mention the time it put back on the clock of their own engineers.

But more importantly, by understanding the impact of modular fixtures on their overall production process, and by focusing on properly engineering that step, our customer is now able to produce parts up to 30% faster. As their team continues to become more familiar with the modular solution, they hope to achieve the same or better results with all of parts on this machine.