Strong Hand Tools Feature.
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Fixtures for
Tube Welding
Modular fixturing tables can
increase your speed, productivity,
and storage
F
or most people familiar with
modular fixturing tables, the
main benefit they are aware of is
the ability to quickly place a clamp
anywhere on the table. However, the
real benefits go much deeper than
that.
Modular fixtures reduce cost and
lead time during fixture design, create
labor savings during production, and
save storage space when not in use.
Modular fixtures can adapt to a
wide variety of jobs while also making
every result repeatable. They are an
adaptable system that solve many
work-holding problems for temporary
jobs, prototyping, one-off items, and
short production runs that are only oc-
casionally performed. Most fabrication
shops have jobs that require temporary
clamping or fixturing every day,
whether for a complex, three-dimen-
sional workpiece or a simple length of
material that requires grinding.
Overview of Modular
Fixturing Systems
Modular fixturing is composed of
reusable, off-the-shelf components so
that the user does not have to fabri-
cate individual fixture elements for
every new job. A good modular system
starts with a flat steel surface onto
78 WELDING JOURNAL / JUNE 2016
Fig. 1 Drawing of a quick-clamping
bolt used with modular fixtures.
(Photo by Siegmund GmbH.) All im-
ages courtesy of Strong Hand Tools.
which is machined a grid pattern of
regularly spaced system holes. System
holes have a uniform thickness and di-
ameter, often with chamfering, to bet-
ter accept specially designed bolts.
Individual modular components in
various shapes and sizes, such as bars
and right angles, are also machined
with hole patterns that match the grid
pattern of the table. The modular
components enable countless configu-
rations through the ability to stack
BY PAM FARLEY
and adjust. The machined faces on
modular components ensure the size
and spacing of the modular compo-
nents are consistent with each other
and the parts in a CAD design have the
same critical dimensions in real life.
Most modular systems are held to-
gether using special bolts that contain
a collar on one end and ball bearings
that can expand to lock components to
the table or to each other. The bolts
are designed to be tightened by manip-
ulating only one end of the bolt, thus
eliminating the inconvenience of
reaching under a large table to fasten
parts together with a traditional bolt
and nut fastener Fig. 1.
Lastly, there are a variety of vertical
and horizontal acting clamps that can
interface not only with the system
holes on the table for quick and versa-
tile clamping, but can also be used with
the holes on the modular fixtures.
Advantages of Modular
Fixturing
Faster, More Accurate, More
Competitive Quotes
Modular fixturing makes the
quotation process for smaller opera-
tions competitive by shrinking the
Strong Hand Tools Feature.qxp_Layout 1 5/11/16 4:30 PM Page 79
Fig. 2 A solar car chassis held in place by modular fixtures and custom fixture
plates. (Drawing by Tyler Smutz, Killstress Designs.)
Fig. 3 Closeup detail of a custom fixture plate showing toggle clamp mount
and holes that interface with modular fixtures. ((Drawing by Tyler Smutz, Killstress
Designs.)
amount of uncertainty involved with
how much time and expense it will
take to create fixtures (or complete a
project without fixtures), ultimately
making the quoted cost lower and
more competitive.
Fabricators can also download CAD
off through less rework and scrap.
fixtures that mate with the system
files of the modular fixtures to design
everything on a computer. This is es-
pecially useful when creating some
custom fixtures to interface with the
modular components. This hybrid
strategy gives designers a lot of flexi-
bility when designing fixtures and al-
lows them to adjust and reuse parts in
situations that previously would have
required new fixtures or extra machin-
ing to adapt to changes in parts and
design.
This means designers can design
and create custom fixtures in hours or
days rather than weeks with the tradi-
tional custom-machined fixtures.
Increased Productivity
on the Shop Floor
Having good fixtures reduces oper-
ator error by ensuring parts are locat-
ed correctly and clamped to prevent
distortion of critical dimensions. Most
welders know this but dont practice it
due to time constraints or shortage of
workers with the skill set to create
them. If you have an easy-to-use, mod-
ular system, you are more likely to cre-
ate a fixture, and that system will pay
Less Storage Space Required
Modular fixtures are designed to be
assembled and disassembled quickly.
They take up much less space when
stored than a dedicated fixture. Users
who opt to create custom fixture
plates or blocks for use with modular
fixtures will still realize drastic space
savings when compared to traditional
fixtures.
Real World Examples
Strong Hand Tools donated mate-
rials to a design project that aimed to
create a fixture for a solar car chassis
to be used by a university in the Amer-
ican Solar Challenge. Tyler Smutz, Kill-
stress Design, Anaheim, Calif., donat-
ed his skills to the project and de-
signed the chassis and fixtures in CAD
using modular fixture models available
for download. The designer took ad-
vantage of the holes and right-angle
brackets as reference points to design
holes Fig. 2.
An interesting feature the designer
added was to incorporate toggle clamp
mounts into the design of the fixture
plates Fig. 3. The slots and tabs are
cut by a laser and later bent and tack
welded by hand. This creates a setup
suitable for even high production
runs, although, in this case, we only
created one final part.
This type of item can also be held
JUNE 2016 / WELDING JOURNAL 79
Strong Hand Tools Feature.qxp_Layout 1 5/11/16 4:31 PM Page 80
Fig. 4 Custom and modular fixtures holding complicated geometry.
exclusively with modular fixtures, al-
though space constraints would have
required it to be fit and welded in sev-
eral sequences. The use of custom
For info, go to aws.org/adindex
80 WELDING JOURNAL / JUNE 2016
plates to hold the tubing simplifies
setup and allows the entire part to be
assembled and welded at once.
In our second example, a user took
Fig. 5 A closeup view of custom fix-
tures and slots to provide minute lat-
eral adjustment.
advantage of the indexing function of
the table system holes to create a vari-
able custom fixture for orbital welding.
The fixtures drop into the system
holes of the table and fixtures. They
can be designed to have holes that
tightly register with the table system
holes or slots and provide some side-
to-side adjustment Figs. 4, 5.
The fixtures themselves can have a
compact footprint with a simplified
feature set because they do not require
as many adjustment features to be
built into them. A fixture that must be
28 in. off the reference surface can be
designed to sit on top of a 24-in. mod-
ular fixture instead of having to ma-
chine and store a 28-in.-tall fixture or
split and redesign a 28-in. fixture into
two 14-in.-long components to meet
the envelope constraints of a machin-
ing center.
Conclusion
Modular fixturing systems play an
expanding role in modern manufactur-
ing operations and can bring improve-
ments to numerous aspects of the fab-
rication process. The benefits of mod-
ular fixturing increase as the need for
leaner, more flexible production
grows. WJ
PAM FARLEY (pam@stronghandtools.com)
is marketing manager, Strong Hand Tools,
Santa Fe Springs, Calif.
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