Ring tongue clamping die
OwnerTrevor Fahyinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A self-actuating tooling die located beneath an industrial press impact zone clamps a the tongue of an end ring side-to-side to hold it dimensionally stable during a pressing operation that clinches a nut to a hole in the tongue. The tooling die comprises a cone-shaped split collet fitted into a corresponding cone-shaped receptacle in the die housing. As the installation force of the press forces the collet into the receptacle, jaws of the collet grip the tongue a corresponding amount. At a pre-determined point of advancement, the collet bottoms out against a stop in the socket to hold the tongue in its pre-installation relaxed shape and size. A spring-loaded stepped pin, which reciprocates within an axial bore of the die, centers the nut and hole in the tongue during installation and later ejects the completed assembly.
Claims16
Press tooling for attaching a fastener to a workpiece, comprising:
- a die with a housing having a tapered socket with downwardly convergent sides;
- a collet within said housing vertically moveable between an upward release position and a downward clamping position, the clamping position defined by the collet's contact with a bottom end wall of said socket, said collet having tapered sides convergent in the downward direction;
- laterally moveable jaws on said collet for clamping the workpiece;
- a first spring in said die housing for upwardly biasing said collet to the release position;
- and,
- a vertically reciprocal pin located within an axial bore in said die housing, said pin biased in the upward direction by a second spring, said pin being upwardly extendable between said jaws and having means at a distal top end thereof for holding a fastener.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.