A picture of a Weld Fixture is worth a Thousand Words.
Weld Fixtures (Jigs) are machines that hold product parts in place while they are being welded in a Robotic or manual weld cell.
Recently we shipped out a weld fixture that we designed and built. I took some pictures and put together a slide show. Unfortunately I can’t take pictures of the parts to be welded together. That is all confidential. So we can’t really see what is going to be welded and why the fixture is the way it is. We can only imagine.
Take a look and see..
One thing I noticed on this fixture is it is designed to hold more than one product… In other words, say the company has snow blower x and snowblower y. One is slightly different than the other and they make about 500 of one and 200 of the other each year. By designing a “change-over” fixture they can do a simple change to the fixture by removing a sub assembly and adding a different sub assembly. In just minutes they go from producing Snow blower X to producing Snow blower Y.
You saw in the slide show that our designers used a simple stainless steel shim as a spatter-guard to keep the mounting surface clean for the change-over fixture. Weld splatter can be a real issue worth discussing. And though I am not a professional welder and don’t claim to be I am going to share with you some of the things I have learned and heard from others in the field…. Next blog.
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‘Til Next Time
The Queen
