PLANNING FOR MODULAR AND HYBRID FIXTURES

Fixturing encompasses the design and assembly of fixtures to locate an d hold a workpiece during a manufacturing operation such as machining or assembly. We have implemented an automated design algorithm fora fi xturing tool kit called the fixture vise: the fixture vise involves tw o fixture plates mounted on jaws of a vise and modular fixturing eleme nts (pegs or flatted pegs). Generally, a fixture vise can handle appro priately sized prismatic workpieces in many different ways. The design algorithm runs in O(A) time, where A is the number of configurations achieving simultaneous contact between the modeled object and four fix ture elements: since simultaneous contact is a necessary but not suffi cient precondition for force closure, A provides an upper bound on the number of Force closure fixture configurations.