DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A TURNTABLE ON A DRILLING MACHINE: A REVIEW OF WORKHOLDING, INDEXING, AND ROTARY-TABLE DESIGN

Abstract

Drilling productivity and hole-position consistency depend not only on cutting parameters but also on how the workpiece is located, clamped, indexed, and presented to the drill. This review synthesizes the research papers compiled for the M. Tech project, “Design and Development of Turntable on Drilling Machine,” with emphasis on drilling fixtures, rotary indexing tables, workholding arrangements, automated station transfer, and precision turntable design. The reviewed literature reports several complementary approaches: 3–2–1 location and dedicated fixtures to reduce setup effort; worm-and-wheel, pawl-and-ratchet, and limit-switch arrangements for indexing; pneumatic actuation for low-cost automation; CAD/CAM and finite-element analysis for design development; and sensor-based control/model verification for safe sequencing. The evidence also highlights design trade-offs among indexing repeatability, structural stiffness, vibration, bearing support, clamping security, cycle time, cost, and operator effort. A key gap is that the reviewed studies commonly address individual aspects—such as a drilling fixture, an indexing table, high-precision machine-tool rotary support, or control logic—rather than experimentally validating an integrated, economical turntable specifically mounted on a conventional drilling machine. The paper therefore proposes a design-and-validation framework for the project, including requirements definition, kinematic and structural design, indexing and locking, workholding, CAD/CAE verification, prototype fabrication, and quantitative testing. Since the supplied papers do not provide a single common test protocol or directly comparable datasets, performance improvements should be established experimentally for the developed prototype rather than assumed from results reported for other machines.