With the recent popularity of CNC routers within the FRC Community and our experiences machining tubes for FRC robots on routers, we at Ozzy Boards sought to create an accurate fixturing solution for the commonly used extrusion sizes.
Many teams spend hundreds of dollars and hours of time on making their own tubing jig, but especially for teams new to CNC machining, this can be an expensive and daunting task.
The TubeMagic greatly simplifies this process. Simply slide tube in until it reaches the integrated stock stop and push down the toggle clamps, it’s that easy. No more tightening vises, just click and go. With a working area of 35” (or 890mm) it is able to securely clamp even the longest WCD drivetrain tubes.
We have a video which shows the product, setup and use here:
We have these available now and ready to ship so that you can have a play and familiarise yourself before kickoff: http://ozzyboards.com/tubemagic/
For teams/users with smaller machines, the TubeMagic can be used partially overhanging the bed or we can make smaller versions which work with 6040 or X6 sized machines(send us a message if you are interested in this).
Love it! Only change I’d make is making the hard stop larger than a single tangent point on a bolt head. We have that on our router and run into some repeatability problems depending on how clean the edge of the tube is. Other than that looks pretty money.
I’m not super familiar with linear toggle clamps, but it seems like using them in this setup would be susceptible to a form of vise jaw lift. Have you experienced any issues so far?
1/8" walled tube might behave a bit differently than the 1/16" demoed in the video.
There are 2 tapped holes for you to put stops in, so if you want to make your own custom stops, you have the opportunity to! Although theoretically the bolt head plus the back rail should be enough to make a repeatable stop, your concern is a very real one, and we’re looking into solutions now.
Thank you for asking! So far we haven’t seen any issues with lift during the clamping, and in fact the clamps are actually angled downwards slightly to help with clamping down to the bed. If you’re taking a very heavy cut in something like a 1x2" solid block clamped down, you might get lift, but my own router certainly isn’t rigid enough to try that.
I haven’t noticed any differences between 1/8" and 1/16" tubing but we’ll keep an eye out.
The video runs through the process, but if you have trouble, feel free to shoot me a PM or email Ozzyboards customer support.
I would shim each toggle clamp with a washer to force a downward angle and prevent lift.
I’d also drill a set of holes near the part stops at a 45 degree-ish angle and mount a clamp there. I’d always clamp that toggle first to push the part into the stops before tightening the other clamps against the rail stop.
A bit more work, but I’d also mill/grind/sand a bevel or other clearance at the corner of the rail stop where it meets the horizontal flat surface. That will give some space/clearance for aberrant chips, or dings etc. on the corner of the part.
We began using down spiral bits a couple years ago and they alleviate most of the lifting issues. Take faster passes (60-70) and more of them (.01 step) and you get great results.
See the video: easiest way is to just stick a 1" spacer on the bed, usually in the form of a 1x1. Most tubing jigs require that you do this anyway, so it’s not a big problem.
We just ordered 3 of these for our X8 Omio. Hope to run most of our tubes with this jig this coming season. We had an in-house design that was showing promise and able to run 6 tubes on the X8, but elected go the TubeMagic route instead. Our design hadn’t left CAD, save for a small-scale prototype.
Anand brought one of these over to our shop to show us what he’s been up to, and I’ve gotta say that this is a quality product. It’s stupid easy to use and would take our fixturing time down to a matter of seconds compared to the eccentric nut system we have now. If anyone has a router, I suggest they get this.
