This stands as a major roadblock to the development of a truly flexible manufacturing system. An analytical approach would break down there barriers by providing an efficient and cost effective means of evaluating fixture designs. Computer simulation of the fixture setup and machining process would provide the designer with a better understanding of possible fixture design failures and assist in design iteration for improved product quality. This is all possible without conducting costly experiments. Experiments have been conducted both for clamping only and clamping plus machining conditions.
Experiments shows that contact zone geometry is affected by clamping force and fixture compliance.
It is observed in experiments that contact zone geometry will change greatly when small clamping force is applied and fixture components experienced little deformation. As clamping force increases, fixture component deformation increases and the change of contact zone geometry is small. It may suggest that for large clamping force, major deformation is taken by fixture components which makes contact zone deformation small. From the experimental results, it can be derived that clamping forces will have significant effect on frequency response if the clamping forces varied greatly. However, it is still needed to be studied how sensitive the frequency response will be affected by clamping force.