DFM A2 Steel Dowel Plate 17 Holes MADE IN USA (English 17 Holes)

Product Information

I don’t know about you, but that’s just a lot of work. If you enjoy it, great, go for it. But I can’t see you’re going to save an awful lot of money. And if you manage to screw up? Dang, that’s an expensive piece of work material to replace. Like what you read on CNCCookbook? Now, having made sure the Fixture Plate is in the right place, you can see where the T-Slot Nuts are. Use a tool such as a drift to reach through the Fixture Plate holes and align the T-Slot Nuts with the proper holes. This is a problem for things like machinist’s vises, where we want the jaws to be parallel to the X-axis travel of the machine. In fact, operators spend time aligning vises with that travel, a process called tramming the vise. But with a fixture plate, the vise can be accurately installed and square, so you skip the tramming step. More time saved! The Tosa Tool Fixture Plates are well made and have some premium features found on much more expensive plates and not available from the other inexpensive vendors. Here are my favorites:

Once that’s done, I will unclamp the plate and install a set of keys, then re-clamp the plate so it is keyed to the table and secured with T-Slot Nuts. Install 3 T-Slot Nuts, one in each slot. Position the top and bottom at the right end of the T-Slot. Slide the middle one as close to center as you can reach.

Recommendations

Some vendors tap every single hole on the plate, but having both smooth bore and threaded holes is a better design. When using a Fixture Plate, the holes perform 2 functions: With a fixture plate, you measure the location once, and so long as you always install the fixture in the same holes, you won’t need to measure again. One way to improve on an aluminum plate is to install hardened bushings. Of course this will negate most if not all the cost advantage. One can also choose to install the hardened bushing only on holes that become damaged.

Suddenly our Fixture Plate is a lot less convenient to use. The alternative is we loosen up tolerances and make bigger holes in the sub-plate. Of course that means it will be positioned less accurately. We can ensure the vise is installed repeatably to the same location and perfectly trammed very easily. Basically, the Fixture Plate locates your vise in the Z direction, so what we need to do is repeatably locate the rectangular base to an exact location and make sure it’s square. With an accurate Fixture Plate, you can machine big parts in sections, moving the part to allow access to each section. That’s very hard to impossible to do with T-Slots. Here’s another advantage of Fixture Plates–they make machining parts that are too big for your machine’s travel easier.Now that you’ve got a Fixture Plate on your mill, let’s do something useful with it. Consider setting up a vise on the Fixture Plate. We’ll use our normal clamps to mount the vise, except that they’re screwed into the fixture plate instead of T-Slot Nuts. I’m not going to bother showing that because it’s nothing new. Let’s start out looking at material costs. Given the issues make a plate larger than my machine’s travels, I will be looking at dimensions of 34 x 12 x 3/4″. I will shoot for 4140 Pre-Hardened plate as well.