Ever Considered a “Nested-Plate” Approach?
This past story explains why a shop stopped sawing blanks and starting machining components straight out of from large plate. Vacuum workholding was key to this new strategy.
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Using a custom adaptor plate with a vacuum chuck enables various different shapes and sizes of nested components to be machined in one setup.
Our recent Top Shops survey revealed that one quarter of the shops in our benchmarking group used vacuum workholding chucks. This calls to mind a past story that describes how a shop applied this technology to machine multiple military components nested in plate rather than individual blanks. The story also offers explains the basics of vacuum workholding.
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