Working in Industry 4.0

Thursday, December 4th, 2025

It’s all about speed and ease, especially these days, when good help can be hard to find. Manufacturers of workholding tools are launching new products and product lines that aim to streamline production processes amid an ongoing dearth of skilled labor and an even greater shortage predicted in the coming years.

At the same time, sensors allow for more data gathering than ever before, furthering opportunities for efficiency.

Labor Challenges

The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030, for a potential loss of $1 trillion. And a study from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute found that 3.8 million manufacturing jobs are expected to be created from 2024 to 2033, but about half of those —1.9 million—could remain unfilled if the talent-gap problem is not solved.

And so it should be no surprise that the leading manufacturers and suppliers of workholding products are putting an emphasis on speed and automation. But shops that want to simply institute more automation or even get started with it should approach it cautiously, rather than try to do everything at once, cautions Tom Dang, vice president of Lyndex-Nikken, Mundelein, Ill.

“To me, going from a machine shop with a six-inch (152-mm) vise and jumping into automation—that’s going to the deep end of the water immediately,” he says. “It won’t be successful.” One place to get started is workholding, he adds. “Take a small bite and do what we call the low-hanging fruit first,” Dang says. “And the low-hanging fruit is workholding. If you don’t understand that, you don’t have a good workholding [setup]. So, don’t start with automation. It won’t do you any good, because workholding is the predecessor to automation.”

Zero-Point Clamping

In one of its more recent workholding innovations, Lyndex-Nikken has partnered with Zero Clamp GmbH on a zero-point clamping device and modular rail system aimed at minimizing setup and changeover times. It’s designed for precision and high repeatability, the company says. Combined with a quick-change system, it helps manufacturers implement a lean production process. Only one clamping stud is needed, so setup times are greatly reduced while machine capacity is increased, according to Lyndex-Nikken.

Zero-point clamping is a modern alternative to a conventional T-slot table, Dang says. But in the last half-decade-plus, grid plates have become a little more widely used. They overlay T-slots with dedicated patterns, with grid plates corresponding to specific parts. It’s better than a T-slot, Dang notes. “But the problem is that I have a bunch of gridded patterns that I have to live within, and then I can’t make my system modular, and I can’t find my center,” he says. “I have to still tap in all that stuff.”

This is where a zero-point clamping system comes in. “Now you can move this work, this vice or this clamping element from one machine to the next that’s why your throughput is so flexible,” Dang adds.

The company’s solution uses a pneumatic system in which only 87 psi air pressure is required to release the clamping stud. Lyndex-Nikken says this means the system can be used for any machine shop, and is ideal for shops doing milling, turning, spark erosion and quality assurance.

Automated Change

Meanwhile, Hainbuch GmbH recently released its Automated Change (AC) line that allows automated changeover of clamping heads with or without end-stop, automated changeover of chucks, mandrels and three-jaw chucks. The aim is to make production more flexible and to use the full capacity of machines with unmanned production, thus reducing labor costs.

While automation has been around for decades, if not longer, Hainbuch North America president Tim Wachs calls the automation of workholding changeover a new phenomenon. “It’s becoming more and more prevalent now as we’re moving forward,” he says. “Especially since, in the worldwide arena, employee retention and finding employees in manufacturing is very difficult.”

He sees Hainbuch as leading the way in this transition, noting that the company invented the clamping head and the collet chuck. The patents for those innovations have since expired, but the point when those products were made, as it is now, was all about reducing setup times and non-cutting times.

“Because that evolution with the clamping head that we invented, just being able to change it out with a quick-change installation tool and change it out back into different sizes, we just kept evolving with different ways of quick change,” Wachs explains.

This led to further evolution with adaptations, in which a standard collet chuck can be used on a machine and seamlessly swapped out to a three-jaw chuck or a magnetic chuck. From there, Hainbuch further developed systems that could change out a whole chuck, including those of competitors.

Now, with the rise of Industry 4.0 and greater automation, the company further evolved its workholding offerings. With the AC line, Wachs says, “We can change out a whole chuck or an ID bandroll with a robot arm as well as changing out that clamping head or changing out the work piece material. We can do that all completely automated for non-stop production, lights-out manufacturing.”

The system is geared toward high-mix, mid- to low-volume parts. In the past, with the automotive sector for example, machine shops may get 1 million parts of one thing, 5 million parts of another. With that high-volume and consistency, job shops could buy dedicated machines that would just churn out parts lights-out.

“It still does happen,” Wachs says. “But even now, the automakers are trying to be more flexible in their production that they can change over to different parts quicker.”

Quick Change

In addition to the skilled labor gap, it’s getting increasingly expensive to power pneumatic or hydraulic machinery, adds Larry Robbins, CEO of SMW Autoblok Group, Wheeling, Illinois. At the same time, the amount of data being gathered with machine sensors can result in greater efficiency.

In response, SMW Autoblok has launched a new line of quick-change, pneumatic robotic tool changer products that can be combined with pneumatic grippers and C40 inductive couplers for a contactless signal transmission. The purpose of the new line of products, grippers, tools and other effectors is for them to be changed out quickly to boost cycle time and productivity, while also allowing for predictive workholding.

Designed for robotic use, the PRS Tool Changer, available in several sizes, has a pneumatic opening, a spring clamp and turbo mechanism. An optional electric signal interface module for enhanced functionality is also available. PRS provides seamless operation, with six pneumatic connectors for media transmission between the changing and the gripper mounting.

The PXS, PXM and PXL pneumatic gripper series are proofline sealed for minimal maintenance, the company says. These pneumatic grippers have magnetic switches, inductive sensors or analog position measuring systems, as well as an air purge connection and are drop-in compatible with standard universal grippers.

And SMW Autoblok’s new C40 inductive coupling system allows for contact-free transmission of power and data between moving or rotating components and those that are stationary, thus eliminating a standard mechanical pin. This also eliminates wear and decreases maintenance needs, according to the company.

The sensors and the electrical setup is designed to help users maintain quickness and consistency.

“This allows you now from job to job, part to part, to duplicate the perfect setup over and over again without any guesswork, without any indicating,” Robbins adds. “And the beauty of it is, is when you go to a standard chuck with monitoring now I can tell you jaw end position, I can tell you jaw start position, I can tell you are in a very broad based grip force. Then when you go to a hybrid version, you can build load meters into the chuck. So now I can measure not only where my jaws are, but what pressure I was clamping at, and I can feed back data at the same time.”

That’s in addition to wirelessly transmitting power and simultaneously receiving data, Robbins notes, adding that the company doesn’t store the data – it just creates the format for users to do with the data as they see fit.

“As the world changes and it gets to be a smaller and smaller place, I think that this is going to become more and more important, is the gathering of data and having predictable outcomes in workholding,” Robbins says.