At BlackHawk, we pride ourselves on the quality brands we carry. We know how important your work is to you and we want to make sure we do our part in equipping you with the best tools on the market. With that mission in mind, one of our favorite brand partners is Carr Lane.

As one of the world’s leaders for standard tooling components and industrial parts, Carr Lane’s tools are used by virtually every industry around the globe. Known primarily for jig & fixture tooling components, Carr Lane Manufacturing offers more than 100,000 industrial parts. These include quick change tooling plates & accessories, hoist rings, toggle clamps, handles, knobs, ball & spring plungers, threaded inserts, clamp straps, drill bushings, alignment pins, fixture bases, & power workholding devices.

Carr Lane continues to bring the best in the manufacturing tooling industry to its customers. New product launches have brought BlackHawk Industrial customers improved quality and faster production methods for the parts they need.

Today, we’re shining the spotlight on Carr Lane’s excellent website which gives ongoing support to customers to help them use their tools effectively. The website offers valuable engineering resources, including basic principles, practical guidelines and free CAD drawings for specific machining jobs. We recommend checking out the Carr Lane website.  

Locating and Clamping Principles
Locating and clamping are the critical functions of any workholder. As such, the fundamental principles of locating and clamping, as well as the numerous standard components available for these operations, must be thoroughly understood. Carr Lane has an excellent page on its website that takes you through the basic principles of locating. The page explains that to perform properly, workholders must accurately and consistently position the workpiece relative to the cutting tool, part after part. To accomplish this, the locators must ensure that the workpiece is properly referenced and the process is repeatable. Click HERE to for Carr Lane’s Locating and Clamping Principles page.

Carr Lane’s Locating and Clamping Guide includes:

• Referencing and repeatability
• The mechanics of locating
• forms of location
• locating from external surfaces
• locating from internal surfaces
• analyzing machining forces
• locating guidelines
• positioning locators
• controlling chips
• avoiding redundant location
• Preventing Improper Loading
• Using Spring-Loaded Locators
• Determining Locator Size and Tolerances
• Factors in Selecting Clamps
• Positioning the Clamps
• Selecting Clamp Size and Force