Assembly Modeling for Design and Manufacturing of a ‘clamp on’ mini bench vise

This ‘clamp on’ bench vise is different from the conventional ‘on’ table bench vise as it can be used for making ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) jewellery, soldering, assembling, or painting. It is portable and easy to maneuver. This report provides a detailed description of this bench vise, its key functions, product assembly, geometric key characteristics (K.C.), and the assembly liaison diagram.

Datum Flow Chain:

To analyze the datum flow chain, it is important to look at which assembly features are responsible for each mate and contact and how they constrain the degrees of freedom in the DFC. For this purpose, we need to define a global reference frame for defining the coordinate directions. Global reference frame is chosen as shown below. We analyze the two states of our product, which are before the screw (3) being fully tightened while the sliding jaw is on the start of the sliding track and after the screw (3) being fully tightened with sliding jaw when the sliding jaw reaches the end of the sliding track/when an object is fully clamped.

Need of Fixture:

Assembly sequence:

Improved Design:

1. To improve the ease of assembly for the second sequence, it may be helpful to have a threaded hole in the fixed jaw and a through hole in the sliding jaw. This aids in separate assembly of the Sliding Jaw (1) with the sub assembly 1. The ease of assembly is increased in this case because the circlip can also be fastened in the subassembly without any hinderance.
2. The location of the “military specification external retaining ring” is in a way that leaves 5 mm gap between it and the fixed body resulting in slack and it can only be assembled before the sliding jaw is inserted, hence, reducing the wobbling function of the screw. One bush of 5 mm can be added before the side-mount external retaining ring (E-style) thereby acting as shims as shown in Fig. 17. This improvement does not constrain the wobbling function during assembly as the screw (3) → bush → sliding jaw (1) → snap ring. After the snap ring is assembled in this case, the screw (3) does not have slack in ‘y’ direction thereby constraining the wobbling function (θx, θz) which is not needed by the customer.