Development of a compliance tester for assessing and reducing the static compliance of fixture-workpiece systems

A critical attribute of a fixture-workpiece system is the static compliance of the workpiece surfaces to be machined. This paper describes a diagnostic tool that can be used by a tool engineer to experimentally assess and reduce the static compliance imparted onto a workpiece by a machining fixture. This tool can be used for the troubleshooting of dedicated fixtures suspected of providing inadequate support and/or the assessment and optimization of modular fixtures during buildup. This paper describes the underlying theory behind the design of the tester. Provided is an overview of the tester's hardware and software functions, including the details of a software module used to determine the minimum number and placement of support clamps that must be added to a fixture to ensure that workpiece compliance does not exceed a specified threshold. Last, the paper will describe a set of experiments that was used to verify the support-clamp placement module.