The flexible solution for the rational clamping of narrow and curved workpieces on woodworking machines with the aid of consoles from Schmalz, or from other machine manufacturers, is called "Innospann adapter plates". With this extension of the Innospann vacuum clamping system for installation on existing consoles, the vacuum specialist J. Schmalz GmbH offers users many more opportunities for the use and utilisation of their expensive woodworking centres. Wherever unwieldy, narrow or curved pieces of wood, and other special wooden parts with unusual shapes, have to be machined all round, adapter plates are the ideal clamping solution. They relieve the user of the time-consuming and costly task of producing and modifying templates. At the same time, the fact that the workpiece is clamped by vacuum on its bottom surface, which means that even workpieces with complex shapes can be machined with a previously unknown degree of freedom.

The clever thing about adapter plates is that they can be used either alone or in combination with other standard suction blocks of the Schmalz Innospann programme or with the original vacuum grippers supplied by the machine manufacturer. In order to permit this, the adapter plates are available with mono bases and cups and with the same overall height as the standard suction blocks, which means that no height adjustment is necessary and that conversion to handle a workpiece of a different shape can be done in a matter of seconds. A further aspect which should not be forgotten is that the use of vacuum clamping blocks for demanding parts ensures absolutely damage-free clamping and considerably simplifies the handling of the workpieces and clamping elements.

The adapter plates can be used on Schmalz consoles and also on the suction-pad mountings of the Italian Biesse and SCM/Morbidelli machines. Each adapter plate can accommodate up to four suction cups (mono base) or a quadruple head (quad base), which can be positioned freely. The appropriate suction cups can then be selected to match the dimensions and material of the workpiece. All users also profit from the fact that conversion to adapter plates is possible without any modifications to the machine, making the decision to change to this highly flexible and universally usable vacuum clamping system even easier. Since the system can be converted quickly and easily, the production of one-off jobs is also no problem, particularly since the conversion can be done at any time without the need for tools. This, in turn, means that such one-off jobs can be produced economically and efficiently between the runs for larger quantities.

The maximum utilisation of the available or useful clamping areas means that the clamping forces are correspondingly higher and this permits higher cutting speeds and thus better productivity. Once the tools of a machining centre have been adjusted vertically (Z-axis), no further height adjustment is necessary, even if several adapter plates or a mixture of adapter plates and other clamping elements are changed, since all of the components are of the same height. The resulting short conversion times help to reduce the non-productive idle times, with correspondingly positive effects on the machining efficiency, the throughput times and, last but not least, the machine times actually available for production. Finally, it should be noted that a certain number of adapter plates and suction blocks replace a large number of individual templates, which means lower costs for storage and organisation of these.