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Any tips for aligning mill vice / workpieces?

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Hopper15/05/2021 09:20:29
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Mount your vice semi-permanently near one end of the table, not in the middle. Then you can use the rest of the table for other jobs and move the table to the one end when you want to use the vice. Relies of course on your machine having a long enough table and travel and small enough vice etc.

Dr_GMJN16/05/2021 20:57:42
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Posted by Hopper on 15/05/2021 09:20:29:

Mount your vice semi-permanently near one end of the table, not in the middle. Then you can use the rest of the table for other jobs and move the table to the one end when you want to use the vice. Relies of course on your machine having a long enough table and travel and small enough vice etc.

That's the problem: The job I'm doing at the moment takes more than the whole bed up. Initially, the four parts in question needed co-ordinate drilling in the vice. Then they required milling along their entire lengths. For milling, the parts were secured on 3D printed, handed jigs, through the co-ordinate drilled holes. Each part had to be moved half way through the cut, and overhung the bed by quite a bit on each side. I designed the jigs so that I could move the part along them and re-secure without having to re-align every time, but there were still two sets of jigs to align.

It all worked out in the end, but because I'm not used to doing it, part/vice alignment took a significant amount of the total time for the job. I was also using a 0.0005" finger gauge, and was aiming for zero indication, which in hindsight was a bit silly for parts that are supposed to simulate castings. Good practice though I suppose.

mechman4817/05/2021 10:06:42
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Posted by Chris Gunn on 14/05/2021 14:57:54:

One way is to machine a slot in the underside of the vice and add a tenon which is a close fit in the slot in the machine bed, and then the vice is aligned automatically. There has been a couple of threads on this topic recently.

Chris Gunn

+1... I have done the same with my vice.

George.

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