Principle of Six point location

Principle of Six-point location or 3-2-1 Locating Principle

● The workpiece should be prevented from moving along and rotating around the X, Y and Z axes.

● A workpiece can be completely restrained by providing three location points in one plane, two location points in the second plane and one location point in the third plane.

● This situation is illustrated in the following figure.

● The workpiece is clamped against pads 1,2 and 3 at the bottom face.

● This prevents its linear movement along negative Y axis and rotation about axis X and Z.

● The workpiece is clamped against pads 4 and 5 on one side face.

● This prevents its linear motion along negative Z axis and rotation about Y axis.

● The workpiece is clamped against pads 6 on other side face.

● This prevents its linear motion along positive X axis and rotation about Y axis.

● The linear motions along negative X axis and positive Z axis are prevented by applying clamps.

● The rest motion, i.e. through positive Y axis is prevented by the working tools.

● Thus, linear motion along the three axes as well as rotation around them is prevented.

● This is known as the Principle of Six-point location.

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