Planning of Compliant Motions for Fixture Loading

Fixtures are used in almost all phases of machining and assembly to position and hold a part accurately. The class of fixture which consists of 3 locators and 1 clamp(3L/1C) is known as the minimal set that can provide form closure which is a kinematic constraint condition for preventing all planar motions. This type of fixtures has advantages in terms of the number of fixture elements required, the time for clamping, and so on. However it is not widely used in industry because reliable loading scheme has not been reported. In this paper, we propose a method to load the class of 3L/1C fixtures using compliant motions. The planner is developed for synthesizing compliant motions to achieve precise final fixture configuration in the presence of sensing and control uncertainties. A novel approach to eliminate uncertainty in part orientation by adding one extra fixture element called an aligning pin is proposed.