Our customer works mainly in the Automotive and Manufacturing industries. We want to share with you a custom precision solution for output gears we created for them.
I discussed this our senior applications engineer Mitchell to get his insights on the project. First of all Mitch please tell us about the brief from the customer?
Brief:
Our customer manufactures output gears and needs to grip the inner diameter of a family of transmission input/output gears for finish turning.
That sounds like an interesting project and not an easy one to solve. What are the main challenges with this brief?
Challenge:
The first main challenge is working with a variety of part sizes. The loading process also needs to take place quickly without swapping the complete chuck during the process. The additional challenge is including enough clearance from the chuck for cutting the parts internally to the required depth.
That’s a lot to work with, how did you solve this and what did you deliver to the customer?
Solution:
The idea behind our design is a “quick-change” style. To handle the different sized parts, subjaws are permanently mounted to the chuck’s master jaws. The Quick-Change top jaws are held in place with a single bolt. It passes through a keyhole slot in each jaw pad. Each jaw segment only has one fastening bolt, meaning no locating pins.
A 3-legged universal Axial Locator is also mounted to the face of the chuck. All parts fit to this without changeover, saving time and reducing errors when switching between parts.
Thank you for that great wrap-up Mitch. How can our readers contact you for any challenging workholding projects they may have?
Sure, You can simply head to the Contact Northfield page on our website or give us a call (516) 431-1112.
The team is always happy to help.