THE CASE FOR HIRING AN EXPERIENCED CUSTOM FIXTURE BUILDER
- BPEngineering
- Oct 3
- 3 min read
Building your own fixtures might sound like the practical choice-- after-all, you have the tools and talent... right?
The reality is that you need to focus on manufacturing your parts, not designing and building fixtures. Here are the key reasons why hiring a professional fixture builder is often the smarter move.
Time Lost = Parts Not Manufactured
Every day spent in-house building a custom fixture is a day that you aren't manufacturing parts!
Time is a valuable resource in any business. Speed can be a crucial differentiator in competitive markets. When developing fixtures in-house, delays often occur as your team balances multiple responsibilities.
A custom fixture builder can expedite the process. They specialize in designing and building workholding solutions quickly and efficiently leaving you precious time to launch new products faster and adapt to market demands, giving you a competitive edge.
Custom Fixture Builders Tailor Solutions for Unique Needs
Your business specializes in manufacturing unique parts and custom fixture builders specialize in creating targeted solutions. Instead of relying on generic products, these builders will collaborate with you to understand your specific requirements.
This partnership ensures that the final product aligns with your manufacturing goals.
Precision and Repeatability
Experienced fixture builders use advanced tools to create highly accurate, repeatable fixtures. This level of precision is difficult to achieve in-house unless you already have dedicated resources and expertise.
Precision-built fixtures reduce scrap and re-work and maintain your tight tolerances -- especially critical in aerospace, medical and high-tolerance machining.
Custom Fixture Builders Possess Expertise in Workholding Design
Custom fixture builders solve workholding challenges every day. They've seen a lot of VERY unique parts and are very familiar with:
Holding irregular, thin-walled and delicate parts
Optimizing for 5-axis machining
Designing fixtures for automation and robot loading
Their designs are informed by years of experience that most machine shops don't possess internally.
Avoid Trial and Error
In-house fixtures often require multiple iterations to fix unforeseen issues like distortion, tool clearance problems or vibration during machining.
Professional fixture builders engineer around these problems from the start, minimizing rework and ensuring that the fixture performs as expected from day one.
You get it right the first time!
Improve Your Shop Efficiency
Custom fixtures often include features that improve your productivity:
Quick change setups
Ergonomic loading/unloading
Modular designs for flexiblity
Compatibility with automation
These improvements reduce setup time, increase spindle up-time and improve operator safety and satisfaction.
Let Your Machinists Focus on What They Do Best
Designing and building fixtures in-house pulls skilled machinists away from their core job: making parts that make you money! Outsourcing fixture design allows your team to stay focused on production, not engineering side projects.
Lower Total Costs
When you factor in:
Engineering time
Machining hours spent on fixture components
Design errors or re-work
Production delays
it often costs more to build a fixture in-house than to hire a professional to do it right the first time.
When You Should Build Your Own Fixture
We've established that hiring a custom fixture builder is a great time and money saver, but that doesn't mean that there aren't instances when it makes sense to build in-house:
You need a quick-and-dirty fixture for a prototype or one-off job
You already have a fixture design specialist on staff
The fixture is extremely simple and doesn't impact critical tolerances
That being said, when it comes to complex parts, repeat jobs, or anything requiring speed, accuracy or automation-readiness, a custom fixture builder is the better investment.
Why Select Blue Photon as Your Custom Fixture Builder
We've established that expert fixture builders can do the job faster, better and more cost effective.
The Blue Photon engineering team provides innovative fixture design services to securely hold your most challenging parts while maximizing your machine efficiency.
Fixtures are integrated with the Blue Photon Adhesive Workholding system and can be integrated with your current quick change and automation systems for maximum speed, efficiency, part access and precision.
Our engineering team and Adhesive Workholding® system have tackled some of the most complex parts in the industry -- and consistently delivers solutions that exceed expectations.
Contact us today to start discussing your custom workholding requirements.
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