Adaptive design of fixture for thin-walled shell/cylindrical components

Abstract

A group of fixtures for thin-walled shell/cylindrical components (10) while they are being machined internally and externally, has a mounting base (1) having mounting holes, positioning pins and clamps to locate one end of the thin-walled component. A supporting arbour or cylinder (5) is fixed in the base. A circular lid (12) is fixed to the supporting arbour or cylinder and has a wedged step to locate the other end of the cylindrical component for internal and external machining, or the major open end of shell component for internal machining. A pair of modified vehicle wheel inner tubes (8) are disposed around the supporting arbour or cylinder. A multi-layered sacrificial liner (7) surrounds the pressure element and is adapted to fit between it and the thin-walled components. When properly inflated according to the design and validation procedure, the fixture adaptively holds the thin-walled components for machining, with sufficient supporting rigidity and dynamic stability, so as to maintain the machining precision and surface finish to an acceptable engineering standard. Furthermore, a reasonable and practical design and validation procedure is supplied, easily adapted to different sized thin-walled shell/cylindrical components.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.