Precision Assembly Fixture for Interior Automotive Panels

It’s 2022 and the process of assembling vehicles has changed quite a bit since Henry Ford implemented the assembly line over 100 years ago. Today the automotive industry relies heavily on automation to construct the cars, trucks, and SUVs we use every day. In order to guarantee accurate placement and alignment when connecting various vehicle components, automated cells rely on specific tools and fixtures during the manufacturing process.

In this case, our customer manufactures interior vehicle panels for Tier 1 automotive companies and our task was to machine assembly fixtures for this process. As part of a much larger automated assembly cell, these fixtures will hold interior panels while a robot adds clips to the underside of the part, reducing the number of required workers during a time of labor shortages in manufacturing.

All parts of the fixture, including its complex 3D contours, were formed using a 3 axis CNC mill. In order to guarantee each fixture would fit the customer’s interior panels perfectly, we used a laser scanner to reverse engineer the part and created digital 3D fixture models for design approval. Upon getting the green light, we manufactured eight different sized fixtures from UHMW and Aluminum.

After working with this customer for the last 25 years, our relationship and their trust in us speaks for itself. We look forward to many more years of providing automotive fixturing for all of their needs.