A detail of the Samantha Frame Fixture that has been nagging at me since the start are the pair of low profile dog clamps that I use to help hold the angle beams in place. These are redundant and are there to help the clamp at the base of the beam. It would be a real shame if these were to move without me knowing.
Originally, I had specified some RUITOOL Bench Dog Clamp, 3/4″ on Amazon. These come with the 3/4″ dog that carpenters like to use. I simply unthreaded them, tossed it in the lathe and brought it down to 5/8″ to fit my RhinoCart. I also cut down the foot thread to limit the range some and increase clearance.
This worked well enough for the last few builds but the thin aluminum sections guaranteed failure at some point in time. More, there was something lacking in exactly how low these would be in every scenario, like when the pin bore has something behind it and cannot be inserted as far as I’d like.
Since it’s been almost a year and I’ve found no suitable replacement, I decided to engineer something better. I looked into a number of designs and components and was left with the fact that while I could make something ‘better’, these cheap clamps had some things going for them:
- The arms are nicely finished and anodized.
- The leveling feet are quite low profile already.
- The knob is tidy and out of the way and looks nice.
My real issue was the pin. What if I just modified what I had to be far better?
I spent far too much time on a design for a retrofit over last weekend while my wife was away. Sometimes going really deep is what it takes to get to a state of grace and I think that’s what’s been done here. I can leverage this work at any time in the future.
Effectively, this modification has the parts working just as they had before but with the addition of a floating pin. This means the clamp face and the clearance beneath the dog hole are de-coupled and will be set independently. The parts are stainless steel so they are very strong and rust free. The range of the clamp was defined with the ability to clamp 8020 1575 (0.750″) and 1515 (1.000″) profiles to the table.
I’m excited that this detail has now been taken care of and improves the look of the whole system. I expect to make four more similar clamps for a new part of the fixture that is due for a reveal in a few weeks.
