Horizontal machining centers earn their keep by keeping the spindle cutting while an operator works the opposite pallet. A zero-base tombstone multiplies that advantage by presenting several faces of parts to the spindle in one setup.
With zero-point locators on each face, parts are set up off-machine and dropped onto the tombstone in seconds. A four-sided column can hold four times the parts of a single fixture plate, cutting the number of pallet changes per shift.
Rigidity matters: a low-deflection column and a common datum across faces keep every part in tolerance under cutting load. That is why our tombstones are machined and inspected as a single reference structure.
For small-to-medium parts in production volumes, moving from a flat fixture to a multi-face tombstone is one of the fastest ways to raise spindle utilization without buying another machine.
