RAPid CAPS PROTECT FASTENERS – MAKE WELD FIXTURES EASIER TO CHANGE

WELD FIXTURE SPECIALISTS ANSWER NEED TO MAKE WORK HOLDING FIXTURES EASIER TO CHANGE

Protective brass caps for fasteners help manufacturers re-use components and make changes to machine tools.

Rapidcaps-fastener-capsTHE RAPid CAP STORY

In 2013, George and I were sitting in the long, grey conference room with our customer. He was complaining, “The problem is, when I want to make changes to the weld fixture, it’s a real pain because the fasteners are all full of weld spatter. We can’t get at the socket to remove the screw.”

This sounded a bit familiar. Sometimes it takes hearing a thing more than once for it to sink through our thick skulls. At that moment, we realized that this was an issue with most of our customers that did welding to produce their end product. George and I looked at each other. “What if we made something to protect the screws from splatter,” I asked. “Would that make it easier for you to use and re-use our RAPid Tooling Components?

Sure!” he said. “When I was done with a fixture I could re-use the components if I want to… or even to add an adjustment shim if we need to.

George is good at coming up with great designs. He and his team were behind the idea of RAPid Tooling Components back in 2000. So I let him stew on it. I told him that once he got a few made we needed to send them into the real world to be tested.

It didn’t take him long to come up with a design for RAPid Caps.

So we sent some out to our customers to try on their fixtures. The feedback was terrific and orders came in before we were set up to market them. RAPid Caps obviously fill a need in the welding and weld fixture world.

Susan Straley
Queen of Lean Machine Design
Rentapen Inc.

WHAT ARE THEY?

RAPid Caps are made of brass. A round stem presses into the socket of a socket head cap screw and covers the top of the screw leaving a slight gap between the head of the screw and the RAPid cap.

Pop-off-screw-capThe tip of a screw driver is wedged into the gap and pops the cap off.

Adjustments and changes can be made. And the cap can be pressed back into the socket to provide spatter protection again.
RAPid Caps come in inch and metric sizes. Check out Rentapen’s RAPid Caps web page for sizes and ordering instructions.

Manufacturer Saves Money, By Making A Phone Call

Rentapen Inc., a small weld tooling business exemplifies quick response to customer’s request.

In February 2012, a customer that wishes to remain anonymous called Rentapen, a weld tooling components supplier, and wanted to know if Rentapen would add a new style of clamp risers to fit the kind of clamps they use. Rentapen’s team quickly mobilized to create a riser to fit his needs.

The customer located in New Berlin, WI did not have a RAPid Riser™ that worked with his type of clamp, so Rentapen created one for him.

It took only one week for Rentapen to deliver a riser that worked for that customer. This is what US Manufacturers need to strive for, quick product innovation and customer needs fulfillment. The clamp he used by the New Berlin manufacturer is a De-Sta-Co 8021. The manufacturer was so impressed by the RAPid Riser™ that he decided to order 11 more.

“Manufacturers and those who serve them need to move rapidly in response to customers needs in order to compete in the global market place,” said Susan Straley President and Queen of Lean Machine Design at Rentapen Inc.

Rentapen’s RAPid Risers™ are part of their RAPid Tooling Components™ Line. Rentapen’s design team realized they were designing the same clamp risers, blocks and plates over and over again. So Rentapen developed their standardized yet versatile line of weld fixture tooling components.

The mounting holes in the clamp risers are able to fit a wide variety of brands and sizes of clamps including: Carr Lane, REID, De-Sta-Co, TE-CO, All American, and Jergens. A catalog of choices can be found on Rentapen’s website.

If a designer created a clamp riser from scratch, like Rentapen and all other machine tooling design companies used to do, they would have to go through a timely and expensive process that includes: designing the part; detailing; checking; ordering material; writing the CNC code; creating the part and finally inspecting the part.

The whole process takes about 77 minutes. Manufacturers will soon be able to download the 3D model from Rentapen’s website, save the model to their library, put the riser into their design, and order the block. This approximately takes 4 minutes. Rentapen’s RAPid Riser™ is saving the manufacturers as much as 73 minutes in design and build time.

Rapid Tooling Components™ reduce the design cost of the fixture by eliminating the need to design, detail and check similar parts over and over again. Three dimensional computer models are provided by Rentapen that customers can use to incorporate into their designs.

Clamp Risers come in .5 inch increments and in aluminum to reduce weight in the fixture.

Manufacturing engineers have known that purchased components save time and money. Manufactures have been buying their clamps that hold their product parts in position while they are being welded or assembled. Now they can buy their risers that sit under those clamps from Rentapen and reduce their costs.

Weld Fixture Design – Discover how to Adjust Location of Straight Action Clamp

Discover how to adjust the location of a straight line action clamp.

Often times, when designing a fixture we need to think ahead to where else adjustments might be made that will affect the area of the design we are working on.

In this video lesson we discuss using RAPid Plate ™ RB09 in combination with metal shims and over-sized holes to locate a straight line action clamp sub assembly.

So in this lesson we talked about sub assemblies. We have found them very useful.  In a future blog I will talk about how to create them, use them, and still have your whole BOM shown on the main assembly drawing.

Now, those of you who read this blog have a special treat.  Rentapen has just launched it’s beta for downloading 3D models of RAPid Tooling Components.   Please help us test it out and leave a comment below. Go to Rentapen’s home page http://www.rentapen.com and click the last item in the top menu, “Order 3D Models”.

Let me know what you think!

The Queen