Design and Development of Robust Fixture to Perform Friction Stir Welding/Processing on Conventional Vertical Milling Machine

Fixture design is the most critical aspect for the success of friction stir welding and processing (FSW/P). Nowadays, the machines that developed exclusively dedicated to FSW/P are very expensive, which motivated to design a new innovative fixture. This paper aims to design and develop a robust fixture that can be easy to use on a conventional vertical milling machine. The designed fixture and clamping devices rigidly hold the workpiece in such a way that it restricts lateral and longitudinal movement during processing. The later part carried out a detailed finite element analysis to check the robustness of fixture using Autodesk Fusion 360 software (Education license) and validated it in the actual condition. The fixture setup is installed and tested successfully on the universal vertical milling machine. The result shows that it withstands high forces generated due to relative motion between the tool and the workpiece.