Gallery, Projects and General > How to's

Keeping your vice straight

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NickG:
Have heard the principle before John but never seen it done - this way looks gauranteed as long as you get the fit good. Suppose you have to assume the T slots on your table are parallel with the dovetails - is that necessarily the case? You'd hope so but not sure about my chinese lump!

Nick

crabsign69:
bogs u always got something. now i need to figger out how to cut a slot in my vice its a hermann schmidt vice and very friggin hard steel i cant cut it with what i have any ideas i could use

Stilldrillin:
One day, I'm going to mod my vice too.....

And make an adjustable vice stop.....

One day......  ::)

David D

Bogstandard:
Batteries charged, now going out to the shop to tidy everything up.

Nick, mine is a chinese lump as well, but it very easy to check, mount your dti in the chuck and drag the end along the inside edge of one of your slots (clean it out first though). Nowadays, they should be perfectly in track.

Crabs, there is always something to do or make in my shop, and I am sure, unless you are one of those people who can afford everything, you will have lots to do as well.
To cut the slot if it is so hard would really require a grinder, but that cannot be done as you actually use the machine itself to ensure it is a perfect fit.
I have seen toolmakers vices like that before, in fact the one I have for grinding and tapping jobs is one, it is as hard as glass. It was over 500 squid when it was bought in the mid 80's (not by me BTW).


Bogs

Bogstandard:
I'm going to have to get my brain around this new camera, most times I can get really good shots, but last night and tonight they have turned out awful.

So the vice was dropped into the slot and clamped down, the bolts had plenty of room around them so no binding. Then I put a parallel into the vice jaws, and took a reading of it's face. I do this because sometimes vice jaws get a little battered and can throw out the readings.

Anyway, the pics are just about good enough to see the results, which to me were rather disappointing, a full stroke of about 5" gave a runout of 0.0001". I even belted the tail end of the vice with a rubber mallet, and it didn't even change. I was at least expecting some sort of fight from it, but it gave up with no resistance.







Just a word of warning if you use a parallel for checking like I do. Most reasonably priced sets of parallels are usually fairly good height wise, but sometimes the thicknesses leave little to be desired. Some of mine are at least a couple of thou out over their length. I have one that I keep specifically for high precision work and have owned it for many years, and it is perfectly parallel all round.

So that's it, a bit of an anticlimax I'm afraid. But at least I now know that I can just drop the vice on, bolt it down, and be somewhere near.

Goodness knows what I will get up to in the future.

Bogs

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