Woohoo! My vise is here!

Yea, slow that puppy down!! when using a flycutter, especially on my big plate i used 300 rpm and only removed .001 at a time. more speed will give a better finish but in our case with these small mill's you will get a nicer finish with slow speed. also, on your finish cut hose the plate down with wd-40 and it'll help with a nice mirror like finish.

If using my 2" indexable endmill, i run it at 500 rpm. i run everything pretty slow. even 1/4" carbide i run at 800 rpm cutting titanium.
 
Thanks Shawn, I'll try and slow it down some more.
I'll have to buy a fly cutter and one of those indexable end mills. I don't like the face cutter that much, a little too aggressive. I even thought of removing all but one of the cutters to try it like a fly cutter but I am not sure it's a good idea. I'll slow it down like you say.

Patrice
 
Thanks Salem but I am getting a little discouraged here.
I finished the plate and set the vise on it. The vise is now set perpendicular to the head. I got about 1 thou from one side of the vise to the other. Good enough for me.
But I still have about 7-8 thou difference on the x axis on the vise jaws. Now I have to take the vise off and indicate the plate to see where is the problem. :(

This is still fun but a little frustrating.

Patrice

PS: You guys forgot to mention that the most ised accessory for the mill is the Shop-Vac! ;)
 

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Oups forgot to add the picture of where I am at on the speed handle.
Family Christmas supper at my house tonight so no shop time today.

Thanks for looking.

Patrice
 

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Shawn, Merry Christmas by the way! :)

I resurfaced the plate and there was a little problem there at least. I took it slower and now it's almost perfect. Again as perfect as I think I can get it for now.
I will try and put the vise on there this afternoon and see how it is. I'll also try to put a set parallels in the vise to indicate of of them in case the top of the jaws that I've been using up to now would be off.

Patrice
 
Well now I understand why you pay a premium for US made tooling. All the top surfaces on the vises are off by anywhere from 1 thou to 5-6 thou and not even always in a straight line meaning I start at one side then it goes a couple thou to one side and then back to 0 and a couple thou by the time I get to the other side. :rolleyes: I also get this on the interior face of the vise jaws. :(
At least a parallel placed in the vise seems to show that the bottom surface is within 1-2 thou.
Guess I'll leave it like that and start do actually do some work and see how it goes.

Thanks again to you all for your help.

Patrice
 
bison makes good workholding tools at reasonable prices, they are out of poland. their lathe chucks are some of the best, and their milling vises are pretty accurate.
 
I was wondering how much you were trusting the "machined" surfaces of the vise.

Those import Kurt-clone vises are not the world's best. Yeah, they're cheap, but you can also pretty much count on 'em being not square, surfaces not flat, and probably made of crappy castings.

I completely rebuilt one just recently myself- but I had a full machine shop and a surface grinder. Basically every machined surface on the thing was .002 to .005" or more out- dipped, swaybacked, bellied, taco'd, you name it.

Now, they're not bad- this particular one was an especially bad example. And a "real" Kurt is $600 and up, with even well-used ones going for $300.

BUT... having dealt with what I used to consider a pretty decent import for six or seven years now (as in using it nearly daily) and seeing what kind of new imports we're getting (even lower quality, even more corners cut) I now tend to strongly recommend buying a better vise as soon as possible.

That import will get you started, but it'd be a good idea to check it and see where it, by itself, is out. (IE, are the jaws square to the jaw travel? Are the jaws flat? Is the base top square to the X travel? Etc, etc.) And learn to live with it's inaccuracies if you can't easily solve 'em. (A day with a good surface grinder works wonders.)

But, as soon as possible, I suggest investing in a good vise. I recently discovered Glacern, who has a pretty damn good product for a reasonable price.

Doc.
 
Patrice, make aluminum jaws for the vise and mill it while attatched, insides and top.., it'll be square :) yes, i'm the definition of a hack machinist!!

thats what i did on mine.
 
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Thanks Shawn and Doc. Some great info there.

I'll try the aluminium jaws for now but the next purchase will be a good vise.

Patrice
 
Patrice Lemée;7645433 said:
I just hope I don't mess up the bottom part of the vise between the jaws while machining them.
Click to expand...

-There's no requirement that says the jaws have to go all the way down.

You will very rarely, if ever, have to lay something thin at the bottom of the jaws, so there's no reason you can't leave either a gap at the bottom (1/16" is plenty) or even just a healthy chamfer.

Just be sure the endmill is tight in the collet- once, when I was making some steel jaws, the endmill creeped out and scored the body of the vise.

Doc.
 
Yes, leave the jaws a tad short! does'nt need to be much at all, just enough so that you dont mill the vise at all.
 
Kind of off-topic but I just droll when you show pictures of your shops. Full sized mills, lathes, etc... If only I could own a decent gear driven drill press... The one I am using now is a crappy 500W one belt driven that has trouble with bits catching anytime you pull hard on it with anything bigger than 1/4"... damn... I am building a belt grinder right now and I will need to go to real shop to get the 20mm (4/5") holes needed for the pulley axles drilled out of the 1" thick plate.

Anyway, I just love to go through these post. Keep up the good work.
Mikel
 
Thanks Mikel. It took me a while to get to where I am now but we always want more it seems? You should see my "To Buy" list. It only seems to grow, never diminish. :confused:

Ok, I don't have much time each day but this is what I could do today. I now need to drill the jaws. A few questions:

1) The barstock I had is about 1/2 inch higher than the original jaws. Is it too high? Any advantages or disavnatages to leave it this high?
2) To face the jaws the only end mill I have that I can do it with (because it is larger than the 3/8 shank) is a 3/4 inch with 2 flutes. I've only used 4 flutes up to now. Any problem you see using this one?

Thanks again for all your help guys, couldn't do it without you.

Patrice
 

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now i think you should make a video of the mill in action with your vise, some aluminum or steel and post it on youtube
 
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