Choosing a part fixture

How do you fix a stock to the machine working area? There is no all-encompassing rule, but we can say that we should always try to take advantage of the part's shape to lock it onto the working area.

Let’s review the part again to find some possible solutions:

Figure 8.3: 3D view of the part

At first glance, a simple and cheap solution would be to use a stock vise to hold it from the squared unmachined faces.

As shown in Figure 8.4, using a large set of vises to hold the stock is a good solution during the first placement since there is a large contact area between the faces:

Figure 8.4: Part fixture

During the second placement, however, the same vises not only provide a smaller contact area that may lead to vibrations but they may also collide with the cutting tool performing the exterior machining.

Since we said that a large number of parts have to be machined, we may have to...