While in the market for a flexible clamping system that would allow for unrestricted access to five sides of a work piece, Midwest Mold unearthed FCS. A system that met all of our criteria and helped in decreasing our internal setup time while at the same time improving repeatability.
With the FCS system Midwest Mold was able to tackle this issue head on.
The work piece can be moved to another machine without additional pickups. That same part can be turned on its side quickly for multiple setups thanks to permanent reference points. The mounting platform is flexible from 500×600 (mm) to our 1000×800 (mm) or larger. This allows for any smaller parts, plates, rails or components to be set up on various combinations on the FCS grid layout.
This has eliminated the need of clamps, rods and nuts, also eliminating interference with cutters, drills and reamers. The ability to drill straight through the part with no need to shim or block the setup has also been gained.
In the end we reduced setup time, gained machining time and were able to add more operations to enhance our capabilities.
