The small lab I get to use was in need of a second alignment jig.
My requirements were simple – It needed to be cheap, and it needed to be heavy duty (to handle the 5 gallon trans-femorals).
My solution was to contact a machinist that I use regularly for odd small run stuff. Full disclosure he’s my father, and, he doesn’t give me a discount.
He made me 4 crown collars and a collar clamp with a flat back that I could weld to 2″ box tubing.
Side Note – I like to have lots of collars because I leave them on the pipe from first pour up till we break out the lamination. The crown collars have four slots so they will key in accurately at 90 degree intervals. I use these in conjunction with a collar vice for modifying so I can rapidly and accurately move between the four quadrants of the cast. But I digress.. . .
I welded up the jig from heavy wall box. This is overkill but I wanted a jig that doesn’t flex under the weight of a “Two Bucket” wet cast. I made mine medium fancy since I was building it for myself but I drew up a couple of designs that were bare bones simple and would have done the job just fine. All in all the whole thing came in under $500.00 including my labor and all materials. It’s not as slick as the Hosmer stand but it is very robust. I would expect the labor costs to be similar from most any decent weld shop. Or, if you have your own welder even better. If you don’t, you should, they pay for themselves very quickly. But I digress .. . .
If anyone would like to see a picture of what we did let me know and I’ll send some along. I don’t have a facebook, pinterest or photobucket account to put them up on. I could also could also re-sketch up a picture of the simpler option.
Just thought I’d share, I know I see a lot of people looking for used jigs – this might help someone out.
Bobby Burri – BSME, CPO, LPO, GDP, RFSM
