anybody used one of these? self centering vise

[snowman]

http://www.grizzly.com/products/H7576

http://images.grizzly.com/grizzlycom/pics/jpeg500/h/h7576.jpg

129.95

[James Wisner]

Will find out shortly as I just ordered one.

Jim Wisner
Custom Metalsmith

[snowman]

lol...good, tell me if i want one for christmas or not

[Dale53]

Boy, that is sure a good looking mill vice.

Dale53

[44man]

Need a way to clamp a mould block to each jaw.

[snowman]

that's not a problem....i just wasn't sure about the quality of the vise, and whether or not they are rigid enough to handle cutting forces without having the vise closed right down. Most vises are made to be rigid under load, but not until that screw is entirely locked in.

[grumpy one]

So, if you clamp it up tight on your pair of mould-halves, it will be just as well locked up as if you closed it empty. Same applies to any mill vice.

I'm not saying that is a rigid mill vice, it's not. But for a small double-acting one it might be OK. Remember that it has two wobbly jaws instead of one.

Geoff

[Jon K]

I agree w/Grumpyone, with a good quality vise you can indicate and zero on the dead jaw or parallel in the jaws, and you have a zero point of reference that will repeat. If both jaws float, zero is not constant.
PITA, if you have to find zero everytime.

Jon
:coffee: :castmine:

[snowman]

the goal here is to be able to close the mould halves up on the cherry, in a repeatable manor.

[Buckshot]

..............Repeatability in closing at the same spot each time is most important. But so is the flatness of the bed, but the block alignment pins will help with off axis jaw alignment. To a degree. I had mentioned this particular vise in a 'mould thread' sometime back, but it was suggested it might not be accurate enough. Could be as I don't own one to check.

While it might not be as accurate as it could be when recieved, it could certainly be made "More" accurate by the user. There is another double acting vise I recently saw but I can't remember if it was in an MSC catalog or not. It was made by Wilton and retailed at $350.

Of course you can go whole hog, as Kurt offers a double acting vise for about $2100.

I suppose you can do a search on 'Wilton Vises' to see a photo and who knows, maybe they even show specs.

................Buckshot

[James Wisner]

OK I got it in and did a fast look at it before cleaning off the grease.

They have a small thrust washer on the back side to take the end play out of the lead screw. This will most likely have to be redone to get the tolerances we need for cherrying.

The two end plates do not look bad, will have to tear it down to see how much slop they have in them.

The lead screw looks real nice and smooth.

I had planned on making new jaws anyway. You need jaws to mach up with the length of mould blocks you make or are recutting any way, ei 2 cav, or 4 cav.

To make sure there is no side play in anything, you also extend the jaws out each side and drill and ream for guide pins for the jaws to slide on. This also with snug gibs on the vise should do anything we need to play with making a mould.

Stay tuned as I go thru this vise and get to play with it.

If this does not work then I will be looking for a used Kurt or ??

Jim Wisner

[Buckshot]

..............Jim, if the threaded parts under the jaws are wide enough, you can take up play by slitting them across the thread. Then D&T a hole through the slit part into the major part of the nut. When you tighten the screw it pulls the slit portion up snug to the threads of the screw thereby removing any play.

.................Buckshot

[andrew375]

the goal here is to be able to close the mould halves up on the cherry, in a repeatable manor.

What I do is lock down the table in roughly the right position but with the vice free to move. Then I tighten the vise to clamp the blank mould blocks onto an end mill in the chuck, this securely positions the axis of rotation of the cutter on the exact split line of the blocks under the same loading as when actually cutting. Then I fix down the vice, drop the table so I can swap the end mill for the cherry and I'm good to go.