Modular Fixturing

FixtureNet II

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FixtureNet Force Display Part Redesign

Applications: Mining Edge Connectivity Fixture Net Baseball Convex Hull Clustering Minimum/Maximum Cut

Modular Fixture Design and Interactive Analysis

Introdution

Welcome to FixtureNet II. This project is concerned with Modular Fixturing. A Fixture is a device that holds a part for machining, assembly, inspection, etc. Modular fixturing uses a number of simple locators (pegs) and clamps to that plug into a lattice of holes to hold the part.
modular fixture image

Fixture Net I

The original version of Fixture Net used CGI scripts and image maps to provide access to the Brost-Goldberg modular fixturing algorithm via the Web. Users create polygonal part definitions and submit them to a server that generates all possible modular fixtures.

FixtureNet II

FixtureNet II updates and extends the fixturing facilities of Fixture Net. FixtureNet II uses Java to handle interactions with the user. This creates a much more responsive user interface. Initially, the user's part was submitted to the same server program used by the original Fixture Net I to compute all of the fixtures. Now, we are pleased to have a new, all Java version of the fixturing engine (see below).

FixtureNet II adds two new interactive analysis tools. The first allows the user to simulate a force on the part and view the reaction forces that the fixture exerts to resist the force. The second tool allows the user to simulate design changes by moving verticies of the part until the analysis tool indicates that the change is too great for the existing fixture to accomodate.

Applications

Both of the applications are available online. They are both still undergoing development, so please bear with us.

Force Visualization

Conformal Part Redesign

Our paper for the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences is available in HTML or gzip'ed PostScript (200K compressed, 7.5M uncompressed).

More information can be found at the original Fixture Net I site: http://teamster.usc.edu/fixture.

FixtureNet III

There is a new, all Java version of the USC FixtureNet software available at http://teamster.usc.edu/fixture/fn3. Note that it does not include our interactive applications, just the basic fixturing engine with a new user interface.

[ Fixture Net | Force Analysis | Conformal Part Redesign ]

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