Hey guys, Rick here from Elijah Tooling.
I am standing in front of a TR 210 Trunnion and today, i would like to show you all something pretty exciting and that is quick-changing that thing. I know that if you have had some experience with this, it takes some time but, we are going to show you that this can happen in a very fast period of time and repeatably.
What's the key to that? Well, we have got these quick change plates. We have modified the Trunnion to accept them. The plates are ground precision plates.
We also made it so that we can accept the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin and the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners. these holes correspond t a location on our Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate. We are now going to show this to you and it is going to be great. So, here we go!
Steven, go ahead and push that baby on here! Woah, that is rock and roll! That big noise does not mean that the machine came apart. That was our ramp that went back up.
Now Steven is going to move the table into place so that he can reach everything and then we are going to bring the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners up and also bring up the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin. The Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin will be brought up first and then the fasteners.
Now, as great as having a Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate like this is, you do not need to have a Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate to do this. Ideally however, you would use the three Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate which, as you can see, he is pulling up into the plate. Then, you would be using the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners. You could have a dedicated type fixture plate that is strictly for this purpose. In this case, we have a Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate that can be used for many other applications besides this.
Now, he is pulling up the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners and you can see the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin already came up and the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners are now coming up as well. Then we just have the ones on the back and we are done. Is that cool or what?
Alright, everything is in. So, for the skeptics out there, now they are are going to go "oh big deal! So you put up some Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners and you put up some Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin but how does the plate indicate?" That is what we are going to do right now.
What we will do after this is we are going to unload it and load it again and then check the repeatably on this process. By the way, I do not think that I have mentioned the Universal Common Modular Fixture Plate that is on the Trunnion. we use it in a very similar way; you can see that there are fasteners in it, our Zipbushing™ Precision Threaded Locator Bushings are in it and you can see that some of the holes are plugged, some are open and some of them have the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin in them as well.
Alright Mr. Machinist, for the benefit of our audience, how close is that plate measuring? About half a thou. Awesome! So, we have loaded this Trunnion onto this fixture in a pretty fast motion and have attached it to the machine and located it and now we indicate the plate within a half thou.
Our next step is going to be to do this all in reverse and do it again so that we can prove the repeat-ability of this process.
Alright! Reinstalled! The proof is in the pudding, right? Now let's see what happens.
Alright, so we what do we got? Looks to me that it is closer this time than it was last time, Steven! Am I right? No, it's the same. Alright, so, same result. It loaded in a half, right? Yup. That is awesome.
Well, thank you Steven. That is awesome! We are going to do one last thing here and that is we are going to release the plate from the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin and Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners and we are going to have Steven try to simulate what most operators go through to set up a Trunnion like this. So, we are not going to remove the quick-change plates because that is just a pain in the rear. But, we are going to not use them so that we can see what it takes in, kind-of, real life.
What we need to keep in mind also is that when you are loading it on with the Xzertz™ Retractable Locating Dowel Pin and doing everything else, the Invert-A-Bolt™ Fasteners are actually going to spin in and it will repeat. So, you will always end up with the same number, give or take a few thousandths of course. I mean, every machinist knows that a few thousandths are a lot. Also, when you actually get into doing it, it is going to change quite a bit when you are doing it manually when you do not have this option.
So, I am not going to remove this from the table, I am going to leave it on the table but, I am just going to move it out of the way.
Going to use some clamps? Okay!
You can't just put these on the edge here like this. You actually have to move them down so that you are clamping it on the sides. So, we have to push it further down.
Alright, he is going to move it towards the end there because he has to push it further into the table Now remember, we have no reference by which to locate this Trunnion. Therefore, we are going to have to it in a manual fashion.
I think for your experienced machinists out there this is all too common. Back and forth, back and forth. Slowly we get close to where we need to be.
Here we go! Not bad! So, equivalent, right? Equivalent? We will find out what kind of time is involved but significantly harder and longer. I don't know whether you want to comment but it seems like we would rather spend our time making parts than doing this setup. That's just me, I guess.
Well, if you want to make money, the only way to do it is to have a machine doing the work. That's right! And, you also have to keep in mind that your time is going to be completely different every time you load it in this way versus the newer way.
Excellent!
Thank you Steven!
And thank you all for your time!
-Rick