#HTE

Making Custom CNC Workholding Fixtures

People rave about the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but few discuss the scaffolding used to get Michelangelo up there. Sometimes when you’re creating something, whether it’s a work of art or an object, you first have to make an absurd amount of supporting jigs, fixtures or structures just to execute the work.

Frank Howarth was recently confronted with this reality. After designing a carver’s mallet with a unique, radial joint between the handle and the head, he needed to devise a yet-to-exist method of holding the workpieces in place on his CNC mill. Here’s what he came up with:

And if you’d like to hear the design story and witness the execution of these eye-catching mallets, that was captured here: