Purpose of Jigs and Fixtures

Following are the purpose and advantages of jigs and fixtures,

• It reduces or sometimes eliminates the efforts of marking, measuring and setting of workpiece on a machine and maintains the accuracy of performance.
• The workpiece and tool are relatively located at their exact positions before the operation automatically within negligible time. So it reduces product cycle time.
• Variability of dimension in mass production is very low so manufacturing processes supported by use of jigs and fixtures maintain a consistent quality.
• Due to low variability in dimension assembly operation becomes easy, low rejection due to les defective production is observed.
• It reduces the production cycle time so increases production capacity. Simultaneously working by more than one tool on the same workpiece is possible.
• The operating conditions like speed, feed rate and depth of cut can be set to higher values due to rigidity of clamping of workpiece by jigs and fixtures.
• Operators working becomes comfortable as his efforts in setting the workpiece can be eliminated.
•  Semi-skilled operators can be assigned the work so it saves the cost of manpower also.
•  There is no need to examine the quality of produce provided that quality of employed jigs and fixtures is ensured.