The Renaissance Engineer: Pipe Holder Project for HASS CNC Machine

The job consisted of designing an apparatus that would hold firmly a set of pipes to allow precise cnc machining of several holes at specific locations along it length. The apparatus would fit inside the tooling dimensions of a HAAS VF2 Vertical CNC Milling Machine.

Picture taken of HAAS CNC machine from the manufacturing client

Utilizing the maximum working dimensions of the machine along with the known dual compressed air ports available on the working platform of the machine, I began to brainstorm. My first series of ideas would be aimed towards sketching some mechanical means to hold the series of pipes in place.

I came up with the idea of utilizing a type of clamp with can come over the sides of the pipe and hold down it down through some type of vertical linear motion. I came up with a rough idea a type of lever arm with arbitrary parameters to be used to calculate lengths later on.

Here the lever arm has a pivot point to the left end of of length "L" and the free end is located at (Xr,Yr) from the pivot point as the origin. With the lower point of the lever arm held at a horizontal stature to the vertical datum, the angle $\theta$

Here the vertical actuator has moved downwards from the datum point lengthening the lower portion of the arm by a distance $ \Delta L $

$ X = R \cos( \arctan( \frac{ \Delta Z } {L} + \theta) $

$ Y = R \sin( \arctan( \frac{ \Delta Z } {L} +\theta ) $

The lever arm dimensions should have a proper radial length to properly reach the top of the pipe when the linear actuator reaches the "Zmin" below the datum, and have a reasonable clearance from the upstroke when the linear actuator reaches "Zmax" from the horizontal datum.

Here is a working virtual prototype of how the clamp would work while connected to a dual hydraulic actuator.

After a cost analysis of the clamp idea, it quickly became apparent that custom manufacturing of such tight tolerance parts of working clamps over time would be very costly. My next series in my brainstorming path would take on the form of vertical clamps.

My first conquest was to design a platform which would be bolted on top of the existing milling table fixture. The platform would be milled completely flat and the series of holes would provide a variety of components to be bolted on, yet allow some flexibility to further any redesigns if necessary.