Design and Fabrication of Fixture for Rotary and Vertical Welding

Abstract

This project is to fabricate a fixture which can be used to revolve and reciprocate the work piece for welding of cylindrical components. Typically, a welding of a cylindrical component involves rotating a large fixture mounted horizontally and the welding head performs the welding by moving in the horizontal axis. The drawbacks of this method are that it damages the welding cable upon the motion and the use of complex electrode feeding systems. This fixture eliminates those complications by making the welding components static and mounting the welding head stationary at a required angle for the operation. A Stepper motor rotates the circular fixture which is used to clamp the cylindrical work piece. The vertical movement is carried out by the screw rod which is used to rotate the fixture. This gives a cost-effective way to have good quality welded material and gives a standard weld seam in the process than the irregular seam due to human error in the conventional process. The vertical movement is carried out by the actuation of the lead screw which consists of screw in a screw nut which is fixed on the base plate. One end of the screw is connected to the handle for actuation and the other end is welded to the fixture plate. Upon rotating the handle, the lead screw starts to rotate and move up at the same time due to screw action. Thus, making the Fixture to revolve and reciprocate at the same time to weld the component vertically.