- Joined
- Aug 7, 2018
- Messages
- 668
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the votes of confidence.
In this part I'm going to cover making the jaws. Apart from drilling some holes the jaws are all milling.
The piece of steel bar was just long enough to get all eight jaws out of. I scribed five lines down the length, about equidistant and cut grooves with the corner of a 16 mm end mill. By using a "V" block to hold the work and it being just high enough to clear the top of the vise, I moved the cutter 1mm in and 1 mm down, traversing by moving the table forward (towards the handwheel). The cuts don't go right to the edge because the table wouldn't go any further back and I wasn't going to start moving the vise.
I just turned the workpiece over to put a single wider groove down the other side for the purpose of being able to grip round work. I left one face flat an did the cross groove after cutting the bar down to the sizes needed to fit inside the clamp frames. I did those four at a time because that was all I could support on the "V" block.
I don't have a DRO on the mill and it is quite plain to see where I miscounted the mill handwheel divisions. However it doesn't alter the utility of the jaws. All the jaws were drilled and faced off using the lathe four jaw chuck and tailstock drill.
I had considered making all the jaws the same width and cutting a radius in the sides to accomodate the end of the side frame, but discounted that because if I had then I would not be able to rotate the jaws.
Wondering around in the local scrap yard I found several of these 30 mm by M10 X 1.5 mm long nuts. So I decided to use them on the end of the clamp screw and trim the end where it came through the nut. This picture was taken before I super glued the nut to the clamp screw end. They are now drilled to take a 3/16" "T" bar.
I was going to post a picture of a completed clamp, but it seems that I don't have one.
Dinner time now, back shortly.
Thanks all.
Thanks for the votes of confidence.
In this part I'm going to cover making the jaws. Apart from drilling some holes the jaws are all milling.
The piece of steel bar was just long enough to get all eight jaws out of. I scribed five lines down the length, about equidistant and cut grooves with the corner of a 16 mm end mill. By using a "V" block to hold the work and it being just high enough to clear the top of the vise, I moved the cutter 1mm in and 1 mm down, traversing by moving the table forward (towards the handwheel). The cuts don't go right to the edge because the table wouldn't go any further back and I wasn't going to start moving the vise.
I just turned the workpiece over to put a single wider groove down the other side for the purpose of being able to grip round work. I left one face flat an did the cross groove after cutting the bar down to the sizes needed to fit inside the clamp frames. I did those four at a time because that was all I could support on the "V" block.
I don't have a DRO on the mill and it is quite plain to see where I miscounted the mill handwheel divisions. However it doesn't alter the utility of the jaws. All the jaws were drilled and faced off using the lathe four jaw chuck and tailstock drill.
I had considered making all the jaws the same width and cutting a radius in the sides to accomodate the end of the side frame, but discounted that because if I had then I would not be able to rotate the jaws.
Wondering around in the local scrap yard I found several of these 30 mm by M10 X 1.5 mm long nuts. So I decided to use them on the end of the clamp screw and trim the end where it came through the nut. This picture was taken before I super glued the nut to the clamp screw end. They are now drilled to take a 3/16" "T" bar.
I was going to post a picture of a completed clamp, but it seems that I don't have one.
Dinner time now, back shortly.
Thanks all.