A good jig or fixture is worth it’s weight in… 4140.
It took me a while, but I learned that jigging and fixturing are essential, when needed, and care put into the design and strength can pay dividends.
3D printing has proven to be very useful for jigging up odd and hyper-specific geometries for welding.
For the Solaire project, there were over 50 unique sleeving tube footings that all departed at different orientations and clocking angles
The challenge was to weld the receiving tube to the mounting plate at the correct orientation.
A parametric Fusion model was developed to take angle data derived from Rhino and generate the correct clocking and angle relationships and create a print file for a jig that could register to a standard secondary jig that registered to the mounting plate itself.
A veritable onslaught of printing began
Some plates received special custom double-jigs
And the welding commenced
And in due time the final product was in place
And I got to keep a fun souvenir of an unused double-mounting flange laser cut from 1/2″ plate.
Sometimes the jig needed has to be much more organic. Dealing with twisting, fragile surfaces, originally formed by modeling twisted paper, designing custom jig-work for glass is a bit different.
In this case the jig needed to be both an assembly platform and a shipping unit, and to hold the piece at the correct orientation, yet be able to fit through a fairly narrow doorway.
A series of very custom jigs was designed using interlocking OSB panels with a variety of access holes, removable support legs, and joining members to connect several of the jigs together.
3D printing has also helped for creating specific undulating curves generated by decomposing a very free-form curve into semi-circular arcs that are clocked at their tangents.
Rod was rolled in a ring-roller until it matched the printed template, and then the curved rods were mated with a joining sleeve using loctite, and clamped into place using the custom 3d printed joining blocks that held each section at the correct angle.