Fixture table

[patman]

John the aluminum came from 80/20inc and they sell just about everything you could ever imagine to jig something up its fast and easy to make a fixture to hold just about anything. The lift table is not a automotive lift I think it was used for loading injection mold dies in to a machine it already had some BIG bolts in the bottom of the frame for leveling. The fixture top is just bolted to the 1/2in plate table top the nice thing about that is you can set a engine or rear axle up off of the table top and jig around it and as sub sections are completed they can be removed with all the jigging still attached and set aside for later assembly. With the fixture top just being bolted to the table top you can set up stands and let the fixture top down on to the stands and drop the table all the way down then sitting on the table you can weld everything without crawling over and through your project, one thing I am going to add to it will be some brackets to attach my rotisserie so I can hold it at about any angle during final welding. I think alot of the time fixtures and jigs get way to complicated and limit the flexibility of the set up, my table is very simple so just about anything can be added to it to tackle just about anything.

Pat

[Steve Hamilton]

Hi Pat

I can't tell from the photos how you attached the aluminum extrusions to the steel tube?

I see that they offer a 10 & 15 series do you know what the difference is, and which series did you choose?

Steve

[patman]

Steve the aluminum is attached with a bunch of 1/4 20 allen head bolts, the aluminum is drilled through and counter sunk so the T nuts can slip past the bolts. The stuff on my table is the 10 series, the 10 series is sized in 1in increments and the 15 series is sized in 1.5in increments. When I put the table together I thought about using the 15 series but with the table frame being made out of 2x3 tube it would make the width of the rails of the table a little wide and its a little easier to keep even numbers straight in my head when something is just sitting there and deciding how to jig it up. The good thing about a table like this is if you want to duplicate something, I want to make another set of arms for my power hammer so I will make some fast and dirty fixture plates that will bolt to the table and to the arm mounting holes and another fixture plate that will hold the dovetail slide so then with the mounting holes and the dove tail dimension captured on the table about all you have to do is fill in the space in between your fixture plates with the dovetail and mounting plates in place.

Pat

[Gaston]

looks very cool
only question is how do you get "T" nuts into the inside tracks ??? looks like all the ends are butted together and closeing the tracks!

[Steve Hamilton]

Thanks Pat

I will be making some plans now.

Steve

[patman]

John when I assembled the table I just put three times as many T nuts in the slots as I thought I would ever use but I occasionally have to invent a new word when there are not enough T nuts where I need them

Pat

[60 convert]

You could creatively grind the standard t nuts into a quarter turn t-nut, to be able to add more as needed. Google quarter turn t nut to see a picture.
Jesse