Fix it Darren!
Quite right John, quite right you are mate....
Despite the near ridicule for even showing and suggesting that this battered lump might be worth saving, I decided to have a stab at it on the quiet.
The way I saw it was that I had absolutely nothing to loose, throw it in the materials bin, or have a go. If it didn't work then nothing lost.
Two things have happened. Firstly I have gained a very nice and indeed expensive vice, secondly I have learnt quite a bit about milling cast iron and super hard vice jaws...
I'm pleased to say both cut like butter on the milling machine, the jaws I was not expecting to me able to do anything with.
I'll throw some pic's in
The vice as it was
In the base between the jaws I came to the conclusion that all that was required was a flat surface to rest parallels or work onto squarely. So I just milled it down till I had an acceptable platform to do just this. Sorry no picture, I will take one later.
Removed the jaws and attacked the vice body to remove the drill marks
On the fixed jaw the cast iron was rock hard, prob induction hardened, so I used a carbide milling cutter. I didn't want to test this with a new cutter so I used one that was in a terrible state. But first I had to put an edge onto two of the remaining teeth with a diamond wheel. I did this by hand as I have no other means of sharpening milling cutters, yet. I didn't really expect this to work, but it did and cut the whole job from start to finish and it's still sharp !!
Wonders will never cease. It cut like butter too, hardly any vibration or complaint from the machine....
Here is the cutter, don't laugh...
Here is a video of it cutting the hardened jaws, you will see a container of white spirit. Notice the lack of vibration, normally this would jump off the mill bed but it stayed there the whole time.
And this is why, I think?
My other vice you can see is a lot taller, 4" taller in fact. Two things happen when using the lower vice. Firstly I can lower the mill column by 4", secondly the tall vice gives leverage to the bed when under a tough milling job such as what I am doing here.
But most of all, this is a really nice quality vice, and it shows !!
Milling this tough metal was like milling brass on the taller vice, wonderful, absolutely B****y wonderful....
Answers a lot of questions for me this does....
Taking 0.1mm cut on the hardened jaws at my fastest auto feed
I turned the battered jaws upside down, but they now need truing up
This is a deep as this cutter will go, have to use a longer one but that's enough for one night !!
Having machined this vice up, and seeing how smoothly it went, I can see that I'm going to enjoy using it when it's finished. I'd like to finish it off with a diamond disk to improve the finish, not that it's that bad as it is.
