@Fireball_Jason, would you be willing to make the fireball table fixturing available as CAD models for download? I’m sure it would help others in this group, not just me. A little about my application: I work for a company that produces large weldments with fairly tight precision (+/- .030” over 100” length). We develop our own tooling for mass productions that allows for robotic welding and automated clamping sequences. However, I work in new product development creating many prototype units of these large weldments. I would like to use your tables in our prototype shop to improve upon our quality and speed to produce prototypes. Often, we will be building several hundred prototypes over the course of a year or more. Historically, we have welded rest pads, locating tabs, and centering pins to half inch plate. When done, we cut them off and grind down the welds then reuse the table. My hopes with your system would be to set up a fixture, keep it as long as I need, and be able to tear it down and reuse the fixturing for another configuration. If we could utilize the CAD geometry of your fixturing, we could configure the table layout in CAD to optimize their use. Then I could produce layout prints for the table which would tell my welders how to set it up for each product. The benefit of this would be keeping the same setup each time it is torn down which would allow for repeatability.
We have started working with the table inside of CAD so you can essentially build without a tape measure. Here is the link to that video on our second channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bNo6f_G8Xo. Also in the forum there is another video were we used CAD and the table to build a 36 piece railing for our office in one shot. We are exploring providing a CAD package of all of our tools to be able to design fixture assemblies in CAD even if you do get into our table system before this is available it should not take more than a couple hours to model most of the fixtures and the table surface.
Any idea when a potential CAD package could become available? In order to sell this investment and space liability to my team I need to be able to show specifically how it would work with our current project and be able to aid our team in the process.
After your purchase I can send you the rough part models I am using in house now that is enough to get you started and I have a Solidworks print sheet formatted for use right now. When the final package is ready it will all be available for download. Essentially we are using the fixture table as a base to an assembly in CAD then building out the assembly with the part and fixtures: then in a 2D print I am assigning measurements in places where a shim or tooth block is used to reach the specified dimension. All the other fixtures are set out on a Letter / Number Grid across the table. With this you create a fixture map that allows you to set up you part without a tape measure at all. Some this is explained in the pre mentioned video here on the forum.
Is the final package available now?
The final package is not ready for release yet.
I have created my 3D cad drawing in Fusion 360 with coordinates for the 54 X 78 table I purchased. If you are going to make the fixture tool cad files or already have them available I would be happy to purchase them.
We are working on a final package (I am currently tied up with our Sci-Fi office build getting that finished up), what we use in house is just the preliminary stuff that I mocked up and I believe that the final package will be available to anyone who has or will purchase our tables.
Oooooo. Well I was just going to make them quickly in Solidworks if I needed them, but I count as “anyone who has or will purchase our tables.”
I’m curious what file types you plan to offer them in? If it’s not native Solidworks it may still be easier to model them for myself. I’ve had hit and miss luck with the parametric information coming along for the ride when importing other file types into Solidworks. Sometimes it’s faster to model it yourself and have native files when it’s just simple extruded rectangles and circles.
Just another check-in. Do you have the CAD package yet?