Fixture Wear in CNC Production: The 7 Causes Most Shops Miss
Fixture wear is the silent tax on precision manufacturing. It does not trip an alarm, show up on a dashboard, or stop the machine. It simply widens your tolerances — slowly, incrementally, invisibly — until a lot gets rejected and everyone starts blaming the wrong thing.
Most shops respond to accuracy problems by replacing tools, re-zeroing offsets, or interrogating the operator. The fixture gets overlooked because it looks the same as it did last year. But CNC fixture wear is one of the most common root causes of positional drift in high-volume drilling operations, and the damage often starts long before any part is scrapped.
This guide breaks down the seven causes of fixture wear we see most consistently across drill jig systems — and exactly how to identify each one before it costs you a production run.
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