ABSTRACT
Workholding is one of the most basic and necessary processes required for all manufacturing operations, such as machining, assembly, and joining. Workholding, commonly referred to as fixturing, is performed to position and constrain the workpiece for presentation to the manufacturing or assembly devices. If flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) are to be truly flexible, then the fixturing process must also be flexible. This chapter briefly describes the economic justifications for flexible fixturing within computerintegrated manufacturing (CIM) environment. Various approaches to flexible fixturing are presented. The reconfigurable workholding (or fixturing) is one of the most appropriate flexible fixturing techniques for CIM environment. Reconfigurable fixturing employs a number of fixture modules that are set up,
adjusted and changed automatically by robotic devices without human intervention. The requirements for locating and constraining workpieces using such fixture modules are presented. Furthermore, the fundamental issues for planning and analysis of fixture setup are described. A technique for computeraided planning and analysis of reconfigurable fixture is also presented in this chapter.
