Skipping the Dovetail Saves Setup Time for High-End Parts

Workholding can be an albatross around the profits of high-mix, low-volume job shops. Whether from lengthy processes of dialing in setups or time-consuming additional operations to add or remove dovetails, suboptimized workholding can keep employees away from valuable tasks.

When Joseph Alonso founded Mount Vernon, Washington-based job shop Novo Modo in 2023, he was mindful of this difficulty. He wanted his new shop to tackle high-end parts right from the start, and researched the software and equipment that would give him the best chance of making his dream of a high-mix, low-volume, five-axis shop a success. Alonso intended to purchase a work cell he could easily replicate in the future, in keeping with the need for swift setups. He ultimately chose Hermle’s C250 five-axis machining center and Wenzel’s LH 87 CMM, pairing the machining cell with HWR Workholding’s SolidLine modular, zero-point workholding equipment.

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Joseph Alonso founded Novo Modo with the idea of making a high-end job shop from standardized cells. Any job should be able to run on any of the shop’s cells, with Open Mind’s HyperMill software further helping prevent crashes. Images courtesy of HWR Workholding.

Modular Options for Modular Workholding

Alonso had worked with HWR and used its equipment at a previous startup, and was pleased enough with its attentiveness to a small shop that he wanted to work with the company again in his own startup shop. Additionally, it supplies fully steel vises, which he says provide strength and rigidity to setups to match Novo Modo’s rigid Hermle machines.

Novo Modo uses HWR’s modular SolidLine workholding platform, with risers and pyramids that help the shop quickly build custom setups for its workpieces. Most of the time, however, the shop only needs to swap out vises and jaws to complete fixture-side setup. Alonso says this process takes five minutes at the most—and that it is further helped along by all vises being programmed to the same offset, so operators do not need to dial in parts. He says this cuts between 30 minutes and a full hour from every setup.

The modularity of HWR Workholding’s SolidLine fixtures enables Novo Modo to set up parts in less than five minutes. As the shop’s programs all use the same offset, Alonso says the shop can cut between 30 minutes and an hour of dialing in the vise for each setup.

Maintaining a SolidGrip

Equally important to Novo Modo’s setup efficiency gains is how it prepares parts for workholding. The SolidStamp system enables the shop to pair most of its parts with its HWR SolidGrip vises. It does so by crimping the part with serrated jaws, leaving the workpieces with a tooth contour corresponding with a serration in the vise jaws.

Alonso says this method of workholding preparation only requires three millimeters of clamping depth while providing a level of accuracy and repeatability that enables operators to remove parts from the machine for measurement and return them while remaining within a 25-to-50-micron positional tolerance. It also saves the shop the time and cost of dovetail machining. Alonso says most shops purchase and use a less-accurate machine to machine dovetails into parts so their primary machines can focus on more profitable and vital tasks. He says the crimping machine Novo Modo uses instead is even less expensive than one of these inexpensive machine tools, while also being much faster and eliminating the need to replace cutters that wear out from cutting dovetails.

Notably, Novo Modo uses tabs and sacrificial frames around its parts. The part itself comes out of the material, and the leftover waste is what bears the crimped section. This frees Novo Modo from needing to perform a secondary operation to remove the workholding feature (and from another setup where it needs to hold onto the machined section of the part).

Alonso acknowledges that some of Novo Modo’s parts are incompatible with the SolidGrip process due to their size or shape. In these rare cases, the shop uses alternative workholding methods — for example, vacuum workholding for flat parts. For parts coming from rectangular or square billet material (most of the shop’s parts), however, SolidGrip has performed well. Alonso says it saves around two minutes on every aluminum part, and around five minutes on every stainless steel part. While he has not calculated an exact ROI timeline, he says the time and cost savings from this workholding method have added up quickly.

Novo Modo uses the SolidStamp system to crimp material with a tooth contour that fits into the serrated edges of the HWR vise jaws. This saves time compared to dovetail machining — about two minutes per part for aluminum parts, and five minutes per part for stainless steel parts.

One Operation, 95% Material Removal

The rigidity of the SolidLine workholding system has enabled Novo Modo to perform difficult operations with significant material removal while holding tight tolerances. Alonso points to the example of a satellite gimbal almost 11 inches long and just under 8 inches wide at its widest point. Its interior walls were only 1-mm thick in some places, with tolerances between 25 and 50 microns. The part also needed 85-mm bores with a ±20-micron tolerance, and small holes that needed to be drilled and tapped within 25 microns.

Due to the part’s odd shape, Novo Modo started machining with a 45-pound aluminum block. By the end, that part would be 2.5 pounds. Despite the massive difference in weight and shape, Alonso says the workholding on the job was so stable that Novo Modo was able to complete the task in a single operation. Out of almost 3,000 pieces, he says, not one fell out of tolerance.

Rigidity Steadies the Path to Revenue

In general, Novo Modo tries to machine its parts in a single operations. There are times when the shop needs to rely on a second operation, Alonso admits, but the additional operations involve milling the surface of the workpiece material before crimping to reduce stress. After crimping, the shop relies on a single operation.

Novo Modo’s workholding strategies and equipment have enabled it to expand quickly. Not long after adopting its first Hermle-Wenzel-HWR Workholding cell, the shop was making over $100,000 in monthly revenue. After purchasing another cell, its revenue grew to $1.9 million in 2024. Alonso projected annual revenue around $4 million for 2025, and by the fall had purchased and implemented two additional cells.