Toolholding & Workholding

Tim St. Martin knew there had to be a better way of fixturing parts on his company's 5-axis machine tools. "We'd visited some of our suppliers and saw how they were holding parts on their 5-axis machines," said the senior manager of manufacturing engineering for Carlsbad, Calif.-based orthopedic implant manufacturer Alphatec Spine Inc. "They were mounting the blanks into a 'picture frame' and then screwing that frame to a tombstone-mounted fixture. This basically limited access to one side of the workpiece per operation. Many in our company thought we should hold them the same way."

HEIDENHAIN has expanded its absolute rotary encoder offering with the new RIQ/IQN 425 series.

Heidenhain offers a new magnetic ring encoder strategically segmented to simply fit around large shafts is now available from Leine & Linde.

Advanced Machine & Engineering Co. announces it offers Amrok Dedicated Manual Fixtures.

SICK has launched the AFS60 and AFM60 absolute encoders with Industrial Ethernet.

Tooling Technology in Fort Loramie, Ohio, is marketing a line of quick-change devices aimed at lean manufacturing. The Segen Quick change system replaces old-fashioned nuts, bolts, fasteners and hand tools, which significantly reduces the time wasted on industrial setups, changeovers, workholding, clamping, fixturing and alignment.

Catering to the oil, gas and aerospace machining industries, Kitagawa-NorthTech offers the TP530, a new state-of-the-art rotary table with an extremely compact body.

HAINBUCH America Inc. introduces their quick-change workholding interface system for turning centers.

Imagine the time you would save if you could instantly recall the clamping force measurements from a previously run component. HAINBUCH America Inc. introduces TESTit, which does just that.

OML's new Genius 5-axis vice from Lexair Inc. reportedly turns workholding concepts on their head with a unique design that maximizes clamp force at the top of the jaws by pulling them closed at the top with a collapsing lead screw, while holding the bottom of the jaws in place with an opposing force screw.

Kurt announces the expansion of its 5-axis vise offering with the addition of two new MaxLock models.

The KONTEC KSX NC vise from SCHUNK is a powerful clamping system for simultaneous 5-axis machining.