Warped vice...

[AdeV]

Hey all,

In preparation for moving my Bridgeport to it's new temporary home... I figured I'd give it a good old clean & a check over... Things like moving the vice to the centre, cleaning the ways, re-tramming the head, etc.

Anyhoo... I figured I'd tram the head to the vice - makes sense, right, most stuff gets held in the vice, so having the head square to it would be good, right?

Wrong...

X-axis: No problem.  Y-axis... no matter how I angled the head, I was getting around 0.25mm drop on the indicator, as I moved the Y-axis in towards the machine. Now I think about it... if I'd used my tramming tool to set it, it'd probably have worked; but then the head is out vs. the mill, which is less than ideal (there's a bit of droop in the knee, about 0.02mm over 140mm travel). Anyway, it's all trammed to the bed now - but what to do about the vice?

My thinking is as follows: Remove the moving jaw from the vice (not sure how yet); place it upside down on some parallels, bolt it down (somehow) so that there's nothing sticking above the base; then fly-cut the base flat. Will that work? Or am I overcomplicating things, and maybe I should just jam a shim under the low spot of the base?

The vice is a Chinese knock-off of a Kurt Anglock vice - not that it ever seems to work the way it's supposed to; the moving jaw still lifts a little when you clamp it down, so one always has to do the tappy-tap-tap to get the part to sit flat.

[Muzzerboy]

Haxby Shed had something similar recently. In his case the alignment keyways weren't parallel with the jaws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ0sQAv7OLg

In your case, I'd remove both sets of jaws, mount it upside down on parallels and use a face or fly cutter to take a skim. While you are at it, you might look at the pull down mechanism under the moving jaw. I bought a Xmas cracker vise some years ago and what I found there was a horror show. Ended up remachining the hemispherical socket and the slanted face - you will know what I mean when you dismantle it.

I subsequently bought a much better 6" vise from Arc Euro https://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Workholding/Machine-Vices/ARC-Versatile-SG-Iron-Milling-Vices - slapping lipstick on a pig / polishing a turd never seems to pay off.

Here - have a laugh at the time I wasted on my original vise. It was a complete POS but I didn't know any better at the time. https://mightyshiz.blogspot.com/2017/10/chinese-vise-laughable-tolerances.html

[AdeV]

In your case, I'd remove both sets of jaws, mount it upside down on parallels and use a face or fly cutter to take a skim. While you are at it, you might look at the pull down mechanism under the moving jaw. I bought a Xmas cracker vise some years ago and what I found there was a horror show. Ended up remachining the hemispherical socket and the slanted face - you will know what I mean when you dismantle it.

I'll give that a go, then, thanks Not sure when it'll happen, but assuming I find it's not just some swarf trapped under it, I'll report back on how it went.  I can't remember who the purported maker of this vice is, tbh, nor where I bought it from (but it's probably from Chronos, I bought a lot of stuff from them in the past). Will definitely save some pennies for one of those Arc Euro vices though, they look the nuts, and £250 is still a lot cheaper than a Kurt!

Here - have a laugh at the time I wasted on my original vise. It was a complete POS but I didn't know any better at the time. https://mightyshiz.blogspot.com/2017/10/chinese-vise-laughable-tolerances.html

Nice blog! I wasted spent a good few hours of what would have been productive day job time reading about your various adventures!