Part of the assembly process at my second co-op involved installing sapphire pads to various parts using UV curing. To do this, parts were run through a UV conveyor system three times. During this process, the parts were loose and nothing was holding the pads in place. This meant that if the pads fell out while moving parts back to the front of the belt, or if the parts shifted while on the conveyor, the process would have to be restarted. Additionally, parts with more complex geometries that needed pads on multiple sides could only be cured one side at a time, drastically increasing the overall time spent on this step of the assembly.

In SolidWorks, I designed and modeled fixtures that could be used to hold the sapphire pads in place, and allow entire parts to be cured at once. For each design, the pads are held in place by spring plungers, while the shape of the parts they were designed for influenced the form of the design. Using hardware and 3D printed parts, I created prototypes of each design. Although my co-op ended before final versions could be machined, testing done with each prototype showed that each design should work as intended. For the most complex part (the lens cell), the fixture was able to reduce the curing time from 48 to 12 minutes.