Milling Machine Vice

Hello,

I hope I've placed this thread in the correct area.

I bought a 80mm (jaw width) vice for my milling machine from Warco recently. I've found that when I tighten my work in the vice the jaws appear to move upwards and when I use parallels I can move them around easily, even after tapping the work down.

I've looked at a vice from Arceurotrade but am unsure. **LINK**

Can anyone suggest a small precision vice.

Regards

Tom

.

Hi Tom.

I have seen and had a play with one of the vices in the link you show when I visited there to liberate Keatan of a cup of tea. Although I do not own one they did on inspection seem a very nice quality item for the money. If I had not already owned a vice of that size bracket I probably would have bought one.

As for the smaller vice requirement you have I do own one of these **LINK** also from ARC. It's a nice tool that is well finished and does not seem to shift under load.

Nick

Hi Tom,

I have one of the Versatile Vices from Arc and I am very happy with it. Bear in mind you will need some method of clamping the vice to the table before you can use it.

I have no connection to Arc, etc.

Only one jaw, I hope!

All vise jaws will have an upward lifting tendency, more so as the item being gripped is raised from the bottom of the jaws. Some designs are better at resisting this tendency and the cost usually gives an indication of this property.

Machining with the parallels loose is an immediate innaccuracy for the next cut and must be avoided if precision is required. Another reason may be that the sides of the item being gripped are not parallel.

Basically you pays your money ... etc. The toolmakers' vises seem to be better in this respect. The vise you are linking to is likely better than your other one but may not be absolutely perfect (you will still need to 'tap down' while tightening).

Sounds like the one you bought from Warco is a candidate for a refund.

Way back when in 1973, as a 13 yr old in metalwork class at school was told that a piece of round bar should always be placed between the moving jaw and the workpiece and the workpiece tapped down whilst closing the vice.

Has always worked for me........

Grum

I had a second hand Warco 80mm vice when I first started and the same thing use to happen to me, I even stripped it down but it still lifted.

Si I bought an Atlas vice from Cromwell tools, it was only £80 and it is a super piece of kit. So far no lift but the work must be knocked down pretty well.

**LINK**

During my training we always used a lead hammer to knock down work to the parallels,it takes a good clout not a gentle knock,at home I have owned a 4 inch Abwood from new its now 40 years old and it has always needed a a good knock to seat on parallels,some workers make the mistake of giving the vice handle an extra pull after knocking down which unseats the work off the parallels, a dead weight hammer is required to achieve a good seat, Some years ago I was fortunate ti buy a lead hammer mould from an auto jumble for £2 and pour my own hammers,weight must be about 1 1/2 ills. to successfully seat on parallels the work must have parallel sides and the sides must be square to the bottom surface if the bottom is not square to the sides then use one thin parallel or a piece of accurate bar i.e. sliver steel,or if the sides are not parallel then place a piece of round bar between the moving jaw and the work.,If the results are not good then check the vice jaws, is each jaw truly vertical and do the jaws close up all the way across the full length of the jaws.,also check the surface of the vice where the parallels seat ,is this are parallel to the base.? Some of the import vices have basic errors,though I once found an English made vice which had a thou run between the base and the seating surface.

I have the 160mm version of the Arc vice and I would recommend it to anyone. Never have any problems tapping down onto parallels. It's worth going for the biggest one you can get on your mill, I can hold an angle plate, indexer etc in the vice so virtually never have to remove it. The tip about using a bit of round bar bar between the workpiece and the moving jaw is a good one, especially when squaring up castings.. only problem I get with this vice is holding short pieces at one end of the jaws, doesn't always grip them well.

Michael

I bought the 100mm one from Arc a while back and was pleased with the quality of finish in general but found the fixed jaw, which is fitted with tenons to locate it, had been badly put together and was not at right angles to the sides of the vice. Had I not modified the vice before finding this out I would have returned it. In the end a bit of remachining sorted the problem, but it is something to check. The clamping mechanism does seem to work well to prevent jaw lift when tightening and you get a fair chunk of metal for the money so they are well worth a look but do bear in mind possible alignment issues.

Doug

I too have one and am very pleased with it. Be aware though that any vice will distort when the clamping force is applied. Steffan Gotteswinter did an excellent video on the subject which, as with all his videos is well worth watching. See here **LINK**

Regards.

David.

I read an article some years back that explained why it is so difficult, irrespective of what vice you have, to get the workpiece to sit perfectly on a pair of parallels. I can't find the article now but I have found this which some of you may find of use.

**LINK**

The hammer or mallet used to knock the workpiece down onto the parallels needs careful choice, dead blow or lead as mentioned are tried and tested. As an indication of how the choice an affect things I have a mallet with screw in faces, one soft and one harder, both plastic. If I use the hard face I have the problem of loose parallels, if I use the soft face I have no problem seating the work on the parallels.

Martin

Tom,

The type you have referenced to in the link is heavy (10kg) and big...Check the Specifications tab in the link you have posted to see if the size is too big for your machine.

Ketan at ARC.

There are some vices designed to pull the jaw down as they tighten. I notice the linked vice diagram is tagged "no-lift movable jaw". Now the position of the handle / screw implies that the force is applied to a tang on the bottom of the jaw that would move it upward. There are various ways a pull down force could be achieved so it would be interesting to see the underside to the vice to see what is going on.

Harold Hall's excellent website has something on refurbishing a vice which if not the one you have may still be of interest in how to improve matters.

Have you noticed how every American machining video features a Kurt vice. Probably cost more than my mill but seems the thing to have before you can post videos. maybe they come free with the cameras.

Out of idle curiosity I just measured my current machine vice when clamping a 3" wide parallel in the jaws; the jaws are 6" wide. With the parallel being clamped on the top 1/4" or so of the jaws:

'Lift' of movable jaw: ~0.01mm

Movement of top of fixed jaw: ~0.04mm

With the parallel sitting at the bottom of the vice jaws movement of the top of the fixed jaw was less than 0.01mm. In all cases I tightened the vice as much as I could by leaning down on the supplied handle, probably 50ft-lbs or more. According to the manual that corresponds to a clamping force of around 5000lb.

My vice is sold as having minimal jaw lift. It is certainly way better than my previous secondhand machine vice, which had a jaw lift on the order of 0.4mm.

The downside is that my current machine vice (Kurt) is heavy (around 80lbs), large even for a Bridgeport mill and expensive. There are cheaper, and smaller, (Glacern) and more expensive (Orange) lookalikes available in the US, but I have no experience of them, and don't know if they have UK distributors.

If I want to leave parallels in place I tighten the vice a little, tap the work down and then fully tighten. The parallels are then immovable. If I want to remove the parallels, for thru drilling for example, I nip the vice up, remove the parallels and then fully tighten.

I only use the round bar against the movable jaw method when clamping work with one machined and one rough surface. The rough surface being the one against the movable jaw. Using a round bar in this case ensures that alignment of the work is determined by the machined surface against the fixed jaw, not the movable jaw against a rough, and possibly non-parallel surface. Using the method against a machined surface marks said surface.

Andrew

Current US list price of the Kurt D688 is $587, probably £600+ from the UK distributor. Mine was £535 some years ago. But it'll see me out and I don't have to faff around compensating for defficiencies in the vice or worry about repeatability with multiple parts. Worth it for the time saved.

And I like quality tooling; it makes me look better than I am.

Andrew

Many of the Far Eastern copies are based on the Kurt angle lock vise from what I have seen. Both the ArcEuro vises linked above look like pretty nicely made examples at a good price, a cut above the generic Chinese fare and are both angle lock vises that work in a similar way to the Kurt.

As noted, US machinists seem obliged to buy Kurt vises, apparently before they even buy any tooling or set up their machines. Almost as obligatory as saying "...go ahead and..." every other sentence for no reason. Adds nothing but presumably sounds very dynamic.

Merry

Found this website that sort of explains how the Kurt and copies work.

Hi Tom,

I purchased a 100mm versatile vice from Arc Eurotrade at the beginning of December. When it arrived, the handle would not fit and the metal was chewed and forced out by 4mm at the thrust bearing. I contacted Ian, expecting a replacement but he said that “they were all like that” and he decided to pay for return postage and give me my money back.

Unfortunately, I could not find another similar vice in the UK so I decided to import directly from China through Alibaba (a Far East Amazon). I found a company called Olima who make precision work holding devices and although they sell this type of vice in batches of 10s, they sold me one, the QM100N Precision Vice. We kept in contact through Alibaba until it arrived within the timescale and although I paid more than the Arc Eurotrade vice, I am thoroughly delighted with it. The vice cost around £120 including express shipping to my house near Glasgow and an additional £31.49 for import duty, VAT and Alibaba fee. I now have a beautifully made, precision milling vice with accu-lock anti lift device which works perfectly.

I can set it up on my FB2 milling machine with a metal square along the long edge and the jaws are spot on. I could only measure 0.001” lift in the moving jaw when clamping work and all surfaces are truly flat.

I have no connection with Olima other than a very satisfied customer and I have sent them a message through Alibaba about the fantastic quality of this product for the price paid.

Mervyn