Kinematics of workpart fixturing

The concept of an adaptable fixturing system and its hardware implementation are first presented. The system employs reconfigurable fixture elements that are used to locate and hold various workparts for assembly. A key feature of this approach is that the fixture configuration can be changed automatically depending upon the workpart geometry and the assembly operations required. In the later half of this paper, basic analytic tools are developed to support the automation of fixture layout design. Kinematic modeling, analysis and characterization of workpart fixturing are presented. The condition for a fixture layout to locate a given workpart uniquely and to constrain its motion completely are derived. Desirable fixture layout characteristics are obtained for loading and unloading the workpart successfully despite errors in workpart manipulation.