Follow this brief guide for our recommendations, guidelines, and best practices for designing and making pallets for your PuckChuck Zero Point System. Sizing Your Pallet Thickness We recommend a minimum thickness of 1.00" [25.4mm] for PuckChuck pallets. Do not go thinner than 0.75" [19mm], any thinner and the pullstud bolts will protrude from the top of the pallet. Rigidity will increase exponentially with the pallet thickness. For example, if a pallet that overhangs the pullstud by 3" is pulled up at its edge it will deflect around 7x as much at the minimum 0.70" thickness than if the thickness were increased to 1.25". Length & Width The PuckChuck system was designed to allow for pallets of any size - but there are a few design considerations to think about: Pallets must bridge the Z-reference surface on the top of the PuckChuck receiver(s). Receivers should never be clamped contacting only the locating bushing (both for rigidity and potential for damage to the product). Pallets should fully cover the face seal on top of the receiver(s). If not, care must be taken to clear all chips and coolant when changing pallets or storing the units. If using multiple PuckChuck receivers there will be a minimum pallet size (for example, 1/2" fixture plate mounted receivers can be no closer than 5.0" pullstud-to-pullstud due to the size of the receiver) No. of Receivers No! Functional, Not Ideal Ideal 1 2 N/A 4+ N/A Note that the 'NO!' pallet is not touching the Z-reference surface on the outside of the PuckChuck (shown below). This puts all cutting force on the bushing and will not be a rigid setup. The 'Functional, Not Ideal' pallets do not surround the face seal and may cause issues with coolant and chips. The 'Ideal' pallets fully contact the Z-reference surfaces and surround the entire face seal. Pullstud Features The underside of each pallet will require a tapped and counterbored hole for each pullstud. The 0.315" (8mm) bore is optional when using 2+ receivers per pallet but highly recommended for single-receiver uses (to prevent rotation of the pallet). It can also be used as a poka-yoke feature to prevent incorrectly installing a pallet when using 2+ receivers - in this case you may choose to use a 6mm pin instead of 8mm to avoid overconstraining the setup. The 0.630" (16mm) bore is critical for locating the pullstud(s). See the below drawing for our recommended tolerance - the goal is a tight slip-fit. (save as PDF) Fusion 360 Parametric Pallet Design (.f3d) Pullstud Installation Each pallet should have one locating pullstud and one diamond pullstud, with the remaining pullstuds being clearance studs. (save as PDF) Pullstuds should be torqued to 20 ft-lbs [27 N-m] (assuming M10 thread, 6061 pallet). M10 pullstuds require an 8mm or 5/16" hex key.
