F O R A 3 D W O R L D TM

3D Printing Jigs, Fixtures and

Other Manufacturing Tools
How to realize an extreme reduction in time and cost by making your
custom manufacturing tools via additive manufacturing.
By Joe Hiemenz, Stratasys, Inc.

The fundamental objectives of manufacturing

improve quality, decrease cycle time and reduce
costs are the primary reasons that jigs and fixtures
are so abundant. It doesnt matter if the operation is
fully automated or entirely manual; jigs and fixtures
are deployed throughout manufacturing operations
with the goal of reducing costs while accelerating
production processes.
When expanded beyond jigs and fixtures to include
all manufacturing tools that serve as operational
aids, they are even more widespread. They range
from organizational bins and tool holders for 5S (a
workplace organizational methodology) to templates,
guides and gauges. They include sophisticated
robotic end-effectors (grippers) and rudimentary trays,
bins and sorters for conveyance and transportation.
No matter the name, description or application,
manufacturing tools increase profit and efficiency
while maintaining quality.

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Even though manufacturing tools are

widespread, many manufacturing facilities
dont use these tools to their fullest. Making
them takes time, labor, and money. To stretch
limited resources, there is an option: additive
manufacturing. It is simple and automated; it is
fast and inexpensive. This allows you to deploy
more jigs and fixtures while gaining the ability to
optimize their performance.

Since there is never enough time in the day

or money in the budget to do everything
you would like to do, the decision to build a
manufacturing tool puts priority on:

Processes that arent possible without a jig or

fixture

Most obvious and urgent needs

Largest threats and most likely problems
Quickest to implement and produce results

LOWERING THE BARRIER

Easiest to implement

By simply substituting additive manufacturing

for your current methods of making jigs
and fixtures, you can reduce their cost and
accelerate delivery. In these terms alone,
additive manufacturing systems are easily
justified with short payback periods. But this
ignores the larger impact on the bottom line.
Additive manufacturing lowers the threshold
for justifying a new tool, which allows you
to address unmet needs throughout the
production process.

Deciding when and where to use a jig or fixture

is no different from any of the other daily
decisions we make. Action is taken when value
outweighs investment or when the path has
little resistance.

If you were to look around the manufacturing

floor, assembly area, and quality control lab,
how many new opportunities would you find
for a jig or fixture? What would the value be?
Could it:

reduce scrap and rework?

decrease direct labor time?

Additive manufacturing lowers the justification

threshold by increasing your return on
investment and decreasing the obstacles
between a great idea and a solution. It does this
by simplifying the process, lowering the cost,
and decreasing lead time.
When using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)
as the additive manufacturing approach to
make jigs and fixtures, the process has just three
steps: prepare the CAD file, build the tool, and
post process it. Unlike conventional fabrication
methods, FDM requires little experience and
minimal direct labor.

improve process throughput?

improve process control and repeatability?
And with respect to the bottom line, how much
more profit would the company gain?
More importantly, why arent jigs or fixtures
currently being used in these operations if they
have value? Most likely, they were not justifiable.
Although there is a benefit in having the jig
or fixture, the return on investment isnt large
enough to warrant the effort. You may have
found that your time and money were better
spent elsewhere.

In many cases, jigs and fixtures are

manufactured with only 15 minutes of hands-on
labor. More importantly, they are manufactured
with little training on how the process works
and no need for prior experience. Combined,
this makes FDM an ideal self-serve option for
jigs and fixtures. According to Natalie Williams,
Quality Manager at Thogus Products, an
injection molder that specializes in low-volume
manufacturing and highly engineered materials,
It is so much easier for me to model a fixture
and print it myself than it is to design it and work
through an outside machine shop.

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For Thogus, additive

manufacturing is easy and
fast. For one 12-cavity
CMM fixture the lead time,
if outsourced, was 7 to 10
days. I built it overnight,
she says. Manufacturers
using FDM 3D Printers to
create custom manufacturing
tools often experience
lead time reduction
from 40 to 90 percent.
Additive manufacturing
also can increase return on
investment substantially by
reducing the cost of a jig or
fixture. Typically, companies
realize savings of 70% to
90% when compared to
outsourced fixtures that are
machined or fabricated. For
Thogus 12-cavity fixture,
the savings were 87%.
The machine shop wanted
$1,500 for the fixture. I
made it for less than $200 in
materials, says Williams.

a few seconds to an operation

or increased the scrap rate by
a small percentage, the savings
might not have warranted further
investment in the tool.

According to Thogus quality control

manager, it is simpler, faster and less
expensive to make their own FDM
fixtures than to outsource them to a
machine shop.

When machined fixtures were quoted

at $12,000 and seven days, Thermal
Dynamics opted to make them with
FDM to save $10,000 and several days.

Additive manufacturing
changes that thinking. For a
few dollars, it can deliver the
next generation manufacturing
tool in time to have it in service
the next day. For a tool that
has marginal performance, all
that is needed is a little time
and initiative to redesign it.
Doing so may only drive out a
few seconds from an assembly
operation, for example, but
that time adds up. If the fixture
makes 500 items per day per
worker, a two-second savings
reduces direct labor by 70
hours per person per year. For
the same part, a one percent
reduction in scrap would save
1,250 parts per year.

The bottom line: additive

Making the tool fabrication
manufacturing lowers the
process faster and more
threshold so that manufactures
affordable, additive
can put more jigs and fixtures,
manufacturing will increase
with optimized designs, into
the number of jigs, fixtures,
service. This drops more money
and other manufacturing
to your companys bottom line.
tools, which will improve
the bottom line. Additive
manufacturing can also
IMPLEMENTING
optimize manufacturing tool
AN ADDITIVE
performance. Before additive
MANUFACTURING
Top NASCAR team, Joe Gibbs Racing,
manufacturing, designs that
APPROACH
uses FDM to make fixtures, some of
were sufficient to do the job
which have been in service for more
than two years and have cut lead time
were acceptable for jigs and
Before creating your first 3D
and expense by an average of 70%.
fixtures. Due to the expense
CAD model and loading a
and effort to redesign and
Fortus system, take materials
re-manufacture them, revisions were reserved
and dimensional tolerance into account.
only for those that did not work as specified.
While additive manufacturing is ideal for
Although good enough may have added
many manufacturing tools, it isnt right for

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all of them. The main

consideration for materials
is whether plastic will
suffice. Traditionally, jigs
and fixtures have been
fabricated in metal. For
some, metal may be a
requirement. For others,
metal may have been just
a practical option because
it is conducive to milling,
turning, bending and
fabricating. In this case,
additive manufacturing
may be an option. With
a range of materials to
select from, the FDM
additive manufacturing
process can offer chemical
resistance (petroleum,
solvents), thermal
resistance (up to 390
F/ 200 C) and resilient
mechanical properties.

but as a rule, stick with this value

when keeping the process simple.

DESIGN

By using additive manufacturing to

recreate a gripper with internal vacuum
channels, Digital Mechanics eliminated
five external hoses that hampered
operations.

This ergonomic and lighter BMW hand

tool reduced worker fatigue.

Your current inventory of jigs

and fixtures were designed with
consideration for the capabilities
and limitations of the fabrication
methods used to create them.
By adhering to design for
manufacturability (DFM) rules, you
made them practical, kept cost to
a minimum, and made lead times
reasonable. These rules dont
apply to additive manufacturing.
They have no bearing on time,
cost, quality, performance,
or practicality. In some cases,
adhering to old DFM rules may
actually have the opposite effect.
So, throw out the old rules and
start with a clean slate and a fresh
design.

Plastic manufacturing tools

may also deliver some
The additive nature of the process
unexpected advantages.
gives you unmatched freedom
For example, Thogus
of design. What may have been
uses FDM-made robotic
impractical is now realistic and
attachments that absorb
reasonable. Jigs and fixtures can
impact. In the event that
have complex, feature-laden,
Using FDM, BMW prints jigs and
fixtures that would not be possible with
the robot arm crashes
and freeform configurations
conventional machining and fabrication.
into an obstacle, the FDM 3D printing allows them to be easier to
without adding time and cost.
part is likely to isolate the
In fact, added complexity may
use and more functional.
arm from damages, which
even reduce cost and time. For
prevents expensive repairs
example, pockets, holes and
and downtime. In another example, BMW
channels reduce material consumption, build
uses plastic, hand-held tools because they
time and total process time.
are lighter and easier to handle, reducing
worker fatigue.
To leverage additive manufacturing, let
the function and performance of the jig or
When deciding whether to try additive
fixture dictate the design. Follow the lead
manufacturing on some initial tool-making
of companies like Digital Mechanics AB and
projects, for dimensional accuracy, pick tools
BMW. Digital Mechanics capitalized on the
requiring tolerances larger than 0.005 inch
freedom of design for a vacuum-assisted robotic
(0.127 mm). Tighter tolerances are possible,
gripper. Conventionally made, the gripper had

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external hoses hanging off it. With additive

manufacturing, each finger of the gripper
was given an internal vacuum channel that
eliminated the hoses.
For BMW, freedom of design allows assembly
line workers to have a tool that reaches under,
behind, and inside the rear of the bumper.
Manufacturing engineers focused solely on
the function, which resulted in an organically
shaped bumper-reach tool.
Design freedoms can also improve the
ergonomics of manufacturing tools. The weight,
balance and position of the tool have direct
effects on technician comfort, process cycle
time and ease of access and storage. To achieve
optimal ergonomics, simply design it into your
tools. For example, BMW redesigned a badge
alignment fixture to improve balance and
reduce weight. This reduced worker strain and
improved the cycle time for badge attachment.
One very simple way to leverage the freedom of
design is to consolidate assemblies into single
parts. Often, jigs and fixtures are composed of
many pieces. This is unnecessary with additive
manufacturing. If reproducing an existing tool,
start with a redesign that consolidates as many
components as possible into one piece. If
designing a new item, create it as one piece.
Only split off parts when it is advantageous to the
operation of the jig or fixture.
Integrating parts into a single component has
many advantages:

Eliminate tolerance challenges

oo Holding tight tolerances is costly. If two

mating parts are combined into one, then

all costs and concerns about controlling the
tolerances of the mating parts are eliminated.

Eliminate assembly time

oo Assemblies, obviously, must be assembled.

This takes time, especially for one-off items

like jigs and fixtures, where perfect fits are
not guaranteed.

Minimize documentation and overhead

oo The sum of the parts is less than the

whole when it comes to time and cost.

Consolidating parts reduces costs for actions
such as design, documentation, quoting,
ordering, and inventory management.

MANAGEMENT
No longer consider your jigs, fixtures, and
other manufacturing tools as assets. Instead,
think of them as expenses, and disposable. As
assets, jigs and fixtures are stored (inventoried)
between uses. They remain in inventory until the
product line is retired or they are worn beyond
repair. With the time, cost, and effort of making
manufacturing tools through conventional
methods, they are too valuable to be discarded
as a disposable, expensable item.
This approach carries many indirect costs,
however. There is cost for the shelf space
(warehousing expense); cost to manage and
track the inventory; and cost to locate a jig or
fixture when needed. For sporadically used
tools, these costs can be quite significant.
The opposite can be true with additive
manufacturing. Often, it takes more to inventory
the jigs and fixtures than it does to re-make
them. So, companies adopt a management
approach called digital warehousing where
only the digital file is carried in inventory. It may
seem unthinkable to scrap a perfectly good
manufacturing tool, but for those with infrequent
use, this approach reduces cost and labor.
Make a fixture when its needed. When its job
is done, send it off with the scrap material for
recycling. Then digitally warehouse its design
between uses. This print-on-demand approach

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is also handy when a replacement is needed for

a broken manufacturing tool or duplicates are
needed for increased production to meet an
unexpected surge in sales.

CONCLUSION
Additive manufacturing can lead to big
changes that maximize profits by driving out
every wasted second and penny from the
manufacturing process. For those who arent
ready to toss out long-established design
guidelines, simply replace the usual fabrication
processes with additive manufacturing. Either
way, the savings on the manufacturing floor and
in jig and fixture production will be substantial.
If you have a 3D CAD drawing and access to
an additive manufacturing machine, you are
ready to start making manufacturing tools
with as little as 15 minutes of hands-on labor.
Combine the simplicity with typical time and
cost reductions of 40% to 90%, and you will
understand why additive manufacturing spurs
companies to make more jigs, fixtures and other
manufacturing tools than ever before.

Stratasys Incorporated
7665 Commerce Way
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
+1 888 480 3548 (US Toll Free)
+1 952 937 3000
+1 952 937 0070 (Fax)
www.stratasys.com
[email protected]

Stratasys GmbH
Weismllerstrasse 27
60314 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
+49 69 420 994 30 (Tel)
+49 69 420 994 333 (Fax)
www.stratasys.com
[email protected]

2011 Stratasys Inc. Stratasys, Fortus, Dimension, uPrint, Catalyst and FDM are
registered trademarks and Fused Deposition Modeling, FDM Technology, Real
Parts, Fortus 360mc, Fortus 400mc, Fortus 900mc, Insight, Control Center and
FDM TEAM are trademarks of Stratasys Inc., registered in the United States
and other countries. *ULTEM 9085 is a trademark of SABIC Innovative Plastics
IP BV. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Product
specifications subject to change without notice. Printed in the USA.
SSYS-WP-3DPrintingJigs&Fixtures-1-12

ISO 9001:2008 Certified

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