Machine vice square on mill table

For anyone who does not have a vice with those handy slots in the base already, here is one way of milling them yourself.

Clamp a length of square bar to the milling table, set with a dial indicator to be dead true to the travel of the table and the T slots.

Flip your vice upside down and clamp the jaws onto the square bar.

Mill slot in base the same width as your T slots.

Fit pieces of T-slot width key-steel into slot and secure with screws into holes drilled and tapped into the vice base.

Alternatively, set your vice up semi-permanently on one end of the milling table and leave it there. This leaves the rest of the table for other use such as rotary table, direct clamping etc. Works best on larger mills I suppose.

Thats a very good piece of advice

It would be best to use keys in the base of the vise directly, remove the rotary base first. You could use keys on the base, but without anything more than the degree scale, you will never get it lined up well enough.

I bolted down a 2-4-6 block to the bed and used a dti to get it perfectly aligned with the X axis. Then the vise was clamped carefully upside down to the block. The rear side of the keys can then be skimmed to true them up. You can leave a gap between the end of the milling cutter and the base of the vise as the slots in the mill bed will have chamfers .

SOD, I set my vice slightly off square so I know which way to tap it and then run the table along and just tap the vice in the known direction until the indicator stops moving. It doesn't matter to me what the readings are or anything. Once the needle stops moving it is square. Usually it takes one pass to set and then wind it back to check.  If you think about your method as soon as you start windng to take your other reading just start bumping instead.  If you go the right way the needle movement will slow to zero.  If you go the wrong way you'll see it accelerate so bump it back.  Might be worth a try. 

Edited By Buffer on 15/03/2023 08:20:01

Edited By Buffer on 15/03/2023 08:23:07