modular fixture tables?

Date 12-16-2009 18:56

Never seen or used that type. We have 4 Cast Iron Platen tables with a large assortment of clamps for that type of work and they take one heck of a beating.
They came with square holes and we have drilled and tapped as needed. The Cast Iron has many advantages.

Oh yea! They are made here in the USA.

By Metarinka (****)

Date 12-16-2009 19:17

Yah I came from the background of using cast iron acorn tables, t slot tables, and custom built I beam and C channel tables, plus a slew of off the shelf C clamps, strong backs etc. They work no doubt about that. But I'm starting to dig this modular fixturing table idea, I believe some of the productivity claims when it comes to trying to fit up and square components. But I've never heard about them until today I think a full system of interchangeable parts are relatively new to the market.

Simply being able to square off and clamp on 4 sides without having to rely on a squaring frame or tape measure seems like it would save some time, and lend to repeatability.

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-16-2009 21:05

Those are EXCELLENT TABLES AND WOULD RECOMMEND THEM TO ANYONE WHO ASKED!!! I used them when I was training some non-welders who knew a little bit of welding for a German company back in 2004 and they had those Bluco's, and I thought they were fantastic!!! Relly makes things a heck of a lot easier to do so many things with this table that you only wish you could do with an Acorn Platen table IMHO!!! :) If your company is willing to purchase them, then by all means do take advantage of using them!

Respectfully,
Henry

By Metarinka (****)

Date 12-17-2009 23:07

Glad to hear you liked them. They seem like a smart idea once you get over the sticker price shock. It's almost like welding on a surface plate with that sort of accuracy. Ironically so we would be using them to make and repair hard fixturing.

Anyone else have any opinions on this?

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-18-2009 01:15

Hmmm... So tell me what you know about "Surface Plates" Joel?

Respectfully,
henry

By Metarinka (****)

Date 12-18-2009 15:42

surface plates are generally Granite or Cast iron. They are ground flat by another plate to extremely level surface finishes. Used all the time in inspection and gauging. We used them from time to time on fitup and welding, to check runout.

Just saying the fixture table had good surface finish. better than most welding tables I had. Which would be good for checking flatness and such

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-18-2009 16:49

I thought that's what you were referring to Joel! When I was a lot younger, I took a break from welding for about seven months and I learned how to inspect, calibrate and resurface only granite surface plates up and down the East coast, and all the way west to Chicago... We used a cast Iron plate that had a slightly concave surface shape... We would then impregnate first 10 micron then 35 micron diamond powder onto the surface of the cast Iron plate with a steel roller, but I'm getting ahead of myself because, before we had to do any sort of cutting on the granite surface, we first had to inspect the plate according to the grade it was classified as by NIST.

Now, we would use a laser auto-collimator with a set of mirrors, or just one for smaller sized plates in order to plot out the surface of the granite by checking the 8 axis of the rectangular surface... In other words, the 4 perimeter dimensions, then the two length and width dimensions and finally the two diagonal dimensions... By plotting every one to four inches depending on the size of the plate on to a sheet of graph paper, we would then have an overall surface shape of the granite surface plate!

The pink and The blue-gray new hampshire or vermont granite are fo the best quality because they hold their surface shape batter than any other typ ofe granite, and the Black Gabbro bing the worst garde of granite because it loses it's surface shape in a relatively short period of time... Sometimes in less than a year depending on how much mechanical inspection is going on it throughout the year... Now the classifications go like this laboratory, inspection and tool grades and each of these grades have to abide to a specific overall surface flatness tolerance for it's particular size with the lab grade having the tightest tolerance to uphold and maintain

Once the poltting of the surface is complete, one can easilysee on the graph paper where the peaks and valleys or grooves are located on the surface of each plate... This helps in determining the best possible way to resurface the plate so that the tolerance for that specific plate can be restored by resurfacing via the use of the diamond impregnated cast iron cutting plates which come in a variety of sizes depending on how much surface one must cut... Usually the surface contour is restored to a slightly convex shape and the majority of plate that require surfacing are the lower grade Black Gabbro Granite plates which IMHO, shouldn't even be relied upon for more than a six month period because they wear down and go out of tolerance easily before a year has gone by!!! Like I said before, the Pink and blue-gray granite from New Hampshire and Vermont are the best grades by far because they take years before they go out of tolerance and require resurfacing!!!

My favorite job was resurfacing plates which were used to inspect USN submarine periscopes near Charlottesville, VA when Sperry used to make them because they were pink New Hampshire granite in a temperature controlled environment as well... In other words, in a clean room which had to be shut down if the plates required resurfacing and that one visit I had required on of them to be resurfaced, so for an entire week, they had to shut down their inspection clean room where I had to work and the reason being was that when the granite is being cut by these diamond impregnated cast iron plates, the amount of dust produced is tremendous, and would have clearly wreaked havoc on their filtration system, so that's why I had the entire room all to myself!!!:) So that's what working on Granite surface plates is about in a nutshell... There's more to it but, I condensed it just so you could get a better feel for it. ;)

If you think some welding fums are so toxic, then you haven't resurfaced granite surface plates or breathed in any granite dust combined with diamond powder which was far worse, and back in those days PPE's were considered a luxury to most employers as well as a hassle until the Tsunami of lawsuits followed shortly afterwards! :(
It was a fun job I must say, but some of the scheduling was so friggin unrealistic as well as the horrible exposure conditions which were the primary reasons why I left that company to go bac kinto welding and I haven't looked back since! ;)

Respectfully,
Henry

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 12-19-2009 03:27

Where I served My apprenticeship We had all black granite plates, and a guy came every year to inspect and resurface them, pretty much as You described. One of the guys told Me they used Borezon [boron carbide, I think] as the abrasive. The black granite is not as hard, but it is more resistant to chipping than the harder grades. Most of the plates there were only 18"x24", one was a bit larger.

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-19-2009 04:41

You could use that also and in fact, it was better for Black granite because it was much more cost effective in the long run, but for pink and blue-grey granite, the best cutting medium (Abrasive) was the diamond powder which was also more expensive yet cut much better than the other stuff you mentioned.

Now as far as chipping is concerned, if someone is that much of a bumbling fool to chip the surface plates the way some of those black ones I've seen get all beaten up, I would either deduct the repair bill form their pay check or just send then down the road, because I wouldn't have any need for such a turd! ;)

The Pink and Blue gray if situated in a controlled environment actually have way much better chipping resistance than the black gabbro, but since one doesn't need to situate them in any sort of controlled environment, more folks tend to use them instead. ;) Almost all of your lab grade plates with tolerances of + or - .000002 of an inch or less (it's really dependent on the size of the surface area but are usually 18" X 24" rectangular) and they are usually of the pink, or blue-grey type of granite.

Respectfully,
Henry

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 12-19-2009 05:55 Edited 12-21-2009 03:37

This shop probably chose the black granite on an initial cost basis. They were DoAll brand plates, not cheap, but certainly less expensive than the pink granite. I don't remember what the actual accuracy was, they were way better than "shop grade" which I have in My shop.

The shop I mentioned did aerospace & defence work, The dies We built stamped lamnations for gyroscope & INS system motors. These were high precision stampings supplied under the "Zero Defects Program" of the cold war. Punches & die segments were held to +/- 30 millionths [0.00003] of an inch for thickness, a pretty good trick with an ordinary surface grinder.

The guy didn't have to work the plates too much to get them back to spec, considering all the carbide & diamond grit in the shop air. If I remember it would take about 2-3 days to do the hand full that We had [some got verry little wear].

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-19-2009 06:11

Umm... Excuse me Dave, but isn't that 3 millionths of an inch??? In other words 6 places to the right of the decimal point is where the 3 is, and that column last time I checked was the millionths column, unless I'm losing it all together!!! ;)

Respectfully,
Henry

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 12-21-2009 03:37

Yes, I put in an extra "0". 30 is close enough.

By ssbn727 (*****)

Date 12-21-2009 03:43

I'm glad that you verified that for me... I was about to call my eye doctor come Monday to see whether something was wrong with my eyes because of the Lasik!
Either way, it's a real small amount of tolerance to work with. ;) Close enough for a six hour shave on my beard! :) :) :)

Respectfully,
Henry

By 65 Pipeliner (**)

Date 12-18-2009 15:00

Sticker price shock, you aren't kidding. Looks like a great system, but it's way past too expensive for my taste.

Chris

By mastermetal (*)

Date 01-01-2010 01:19

Bluco tables are unbelievable. Worth every penny. We bought one a trade show for 35,000.00. Throw away your squares and levels you wont need them any more. The hard part is getting the old school guys to use them.