Re: Making a Screwless Vise

On 5/27/2025 7:09 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Bob La Londe"  wrote in message news:1014rbu$2n8jb$1@dont-email.me...
 I probably won't, but I have been thinking about it.
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 I've used a piece of bar stock snugly fitted into and protruding above a tee slot as a vise fixed jaw of sorts. The mill was an RF-31 on which I'd found that the tee slots weren't quite parallel to table travel, so I milled the protruding portion of the stock parallel to X after shimming it up a little. The goal was a vise locating key that corrected the error, not relevant here.
 Two such tee slot bars could hold crossbars that form the center spacer/ backstop and clamping sides of a double vise. With more spacers you could cover the table top with mold blanks. The spacer/backstops could index on the back of the table to make the slot bar fit less critical.
 In fitting the bar I found that the tee slot width wasn't constant either. It was close enough to file. That RF-31 from MSC was accurate to no better than 0.005", usually good enough for electronics packaging. More demanding jobs went to my Clausing.
 

My first mill vise was a piece of aluminum bolted across the table of my Taig, a flat strip of aluminum, and a piece of aluminum angle.  I'd run bolts through the angle, slide the strip under the flat leg, push the vertical leg up against the stock and tighten it down forming a lever clamp on the edge of the stock.  This allowed me to machine the entire face.  I'm sure you get it, but if not I could pencil up a sketch pretty quick.  I think the only reason I didn't send stock flying is because of the very low cutting loads.
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Bob La Londe
CNC Molds N Stuff
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