Float Lock Vice from Aluminium Castings Part 3
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- Опубликовано: 31 авг 2023
- #shopmadetools #homeshop
Part 3. A bit of horizontal milling action on the Bridgeport.
In this episode:
Update on the fix for the rubbish job I did on the composite jaws. All better now!
Milling the vee grooves in the steel jaw faces.
Milling the side recess for flat and sheet stock.
Drilling the cross holes for a pair of roll pins needed later for the assembly.
Some beautiful bird song to round out the video.
Enjoy! 
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Gday Preso, the horizontal head works great on the mill and the vee slot is spot on, there’s more involved in the vice then meets the eye but so far you’ve nailed it, the break of daylight here is absolutely amazing to listen to, we have reserve behind us and the amount of birds singing in the morning is incredible, I quite often sit out the back with the morning coffee listening, great job mate, cheers
Thanks Matty. I had been waiting for the right project to come along for that right angle head. One of these days I will make the bracket that bolts onto the ram so I can run a full horizontal arbor. We are truly lucky to have such beautiful birdsongs here. We have noticed the complete lack of bird sounds in other parts of the world.
Regards,
Mark
I always enjoy how well and straight forward you explain yourself. thanks for the videos
That foot bridge build was one of my favorite episodes!
Still looking good too. And it's practical.
Regards,
Mark
This is a very usable project that is enjoyably presented. Thanks, I have added it to my build list. The bird song was truly awesome, please keep up the good work
Always enjoy your videos Mark. I learn something every time. And I love the glimpses into Australian wildlife.
Nice bird songs. We get a dam wood pigeon every morning cooing down the chimney. Haha. Never mind. Thanks for the video Mark.
Steve.
Enjoyed…great video production/discussion/build
And again a, almost never seen attention for detail. Nice one, Preso.
I also enjoyed the bird music. Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks Michel. The butcher birds have different calls depending on what's going on around them. They have a very distinctive "alarm" call which usually means that there is a hawk or a reptile nearby.
Regards,
Mark
Hello Mark, I enjoy a lot your shorts after the main subjet of the videos. Nature and wildlife are beautiful and really differents of what we found in Europe, in Britanny in particular, it's a beautuful discovery for me; Thanks a lot for that. About your vice, I add it to the todo list. Regards, Didier
Thanks Didier. We are due to visit France again shortly but only for a few nights. We want to visit the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille and the Lalique museum in Wingen-sur-Moder. I've been a massive fan of Lalique glass since we saw a stunning piece in a museum in San Francisco USA.
Regards,
Mark
Hello Mark, You'll see, it's a beautiful musem and Lalique was a wonderful artist.
@@Preso58
Coming right along. Thanks for the video keep on keeping on.
Always a pleasure to watch your work and hear your clear explanations. Love the bird calls. Thanks for your time.
Another great video, Preso!
Thank you for the birdsong. It was beautiful! Australia may have the largest number of songbird species, but I’ve also seen some of the videos of the big-ass spiders that are there, and that’s where I draw the line. I’d like to visit Australia someday. But not as much as I’d like NOT to. 😂
The spiders are fairly shy & retiring, as are the snakes. Don't let either bother you. It's the ticks & mosquitos that give you the shits.
Yes, we do have some big spiders. In the summer we get Huntsman spiders in the house but they eat the mosquitoes and moths so we don't mind. They aren't venomous despite their looks. One of the worst spiders we get in this area is called a white tailed spider and their bite can cause a host of nasty symptoms. Occasionally it leads to necrotic ulcers if a bacteria is present on their fangs. Birds are much nicer.
Regards,
Mark
There is a lot of work going into this Mark. But, it going to be fantastic when it is finished.
The last time we were in Brisbane the sister in-law took us to the dump shop. What a fantastic idea. They put aside items that still look good/or still work and you can purchase them from a shop at the dump for very reasonable prices. This saves on land fill and they make a few bucks, so it is a win win situation. Something that we should have here in NZ, but sadly we don't.
I guess you could lobby your local council. I visit our tip shop regularly and it's surprising what turns up. I just recently purchased a 20 Tonne hydraulic jack which worked but it had a seized up threaded top on the ram. A bit of heat from a torch and some WD40 had it sorted quickly. $40. Bargain!
Regards,
Mark
Really nice work Preso 👍👍😎👍👍
Hi Mark Nice work on the clamps
I especially liked the quick explanation about the obstruction marker at the end. I only wish you had a video or two on the restoration and repurposing. I think you’re skills as a teacher and machinist are uniquely suited to that type story and work.
I should have done a short video on the restoration of that marker light and I cannot recall why I didn't. I do have another project on standby which should be interesting. I don't normally do restoration videos but this one will actually be useful.
Regards,
Mark
Hi Mark, until I was retired and then ran my own business before covid shut me down I worked in radio broadcasting, in Rhodesia and in Canada, doing engineering on transmtter and studio sites. Our FM towers used a larger version of those lights that enclosed two, one up one down, 600 watt incandescent lamps that ran about $100 each so a relamp of two stages plus the top so the company would spend $1000 on lamp bulbs for each tower at least once a year. Then there was the cost of the rigger crew to effect the changes, probably a few grand more depending on deployment and other costs., Those fittings were in the thousands of dollars being about four feet tall and a foot and a half in diameter. The glasses were in three parts, a cylinder top and bottom and then the top was a dome shape. All had Fresnel lenses cast into them and as long as the local yokels didnt use them for target practice they lasted for years, lightning strikes being their biggest enemy. They usually had a lightning rod near by and above so the lights themselves didn't get destroyed. On our AM sites we used multiples of similar obstrucion lights with 112 watt lamps. Don't ask why the strange wattage probably so the lamp manufacturers could charge more. All the fittings were made by Crowse-Hinds in the USA but they lasted for years. Again the lenses needed replacing occasionally and whenever a site was decommissioned I made a point of salvaging the lenses, if not the whole fittings, refurbishing them for spares at other sites. I don't think I ever purchased a whole new fitting in the forty years I did that work but I sure saved the company more than a few bucks by using referbished ones. Now the taller towers use strobes of various designs and powers on the top and LED replacement bulbs in place of the incandescent bulbs.
That's interesting. I had a discussion with Jay Miller who lives in Texas. He has what he calls a code beacon which sounds similar to what you described. He has one at his house that is now sitting on the deck of his workshop. He said they were called code beacons since they could spell out the 3 letters of the station ID in Morse code. I think the old versions are way cooler than the newer LED strobes but those are probably more reliable and brighter.
Regards,
Mark
👏👏👏great work
Cheers Chris
G'day Mark, It's looking fantastic, very detailed, nice solution for drilling and boring those pins. Funny I have the same 90 degree head and have never used it, the need hasn't come along yet, but definitely want to try it...too many projects Lol..
Enjoying the build..
ATB....Cheers...
Thanks Dean. I was always a bit reluctant to break out that right angle head. It seemed like a lot of messing around to set it up but once I got going on it the procedure wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's a lot more rigid that I had imagined.
Regards,
Mark
Another well thought out machining process. Beautiful song birds.
glass blowing would be an awesome skill, think of how much glass we use and how useful....plates, glasses, etc.
Hello Mark. That horizontal milling head sure proved its worth. Excellent result all round. As always, thank you for sharing. 👏👏👍😀
I was pleasantly surprised by how well that unit worked. The vendor that I bought the mill from added it to the deal at the last minute. I hadn't used it since I bought the mill because it was missing the drawbar but I made one and now that I know it's nice and rigid I will be using it more.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 It’s the unexpected wins in life which reward so much 👏👏
At end there, I said to myself, that's a tower light on his septic alarm--that's genius! It was even better with the story behind it too. Good video!
Thanks. It was one of those serendipitous moments when I found it. Certainly a bargain given how well it was made.
Regards,
Mark
Always a joy to watch.
Love it! All of it!
Mark, I am following along. I may make one in the future. Although I would probably hog the vise bits out of a solid piece of Aluminum. btw you don't need a perfect sharp valley in your jaws. At some point a round stock will entirely fit in the v on one jaw and cannot be clamped. At that point the curve of the stock cannot reach into the bottom of the V. Not sure if this wording makes sense.--Dave
Dave, you are correct about the non requirement for a sharp vee geometry. Although, you can grip square stock in the vees that I have made in the jaw faces. At some point, I get obsessed with tiny details and also with the need to use tools that I have but rarely use. Making this style of vice from billet stock is perfectly valid and possibly stronger than the castings I have made.
Regards,
Mark
My wife needs more cockatoos in your videos
Check out the most recent one. It has king parrots, a blue faced honey eater, some magpies and a clumsy cocky!
Regards,
Mark
Great stuff Mark , love the bird songs . The original composers or great music .Cheers .
I'm in Nth Brisbane, in view of the Mt Cooth-tha tower. The Butcher birds here have a completely different repertoire. Similar, but different. I believe Magpies are the same, in that their song varies with region.
I grew up in Mitchelton and the TV transmitters were visible from parts of that suburb. We love the butcher birds. They have such a pure pitch to their call. The magpies are real characters though. Especially the juveniles.
Regards,
Mark
Thx for the vid.
Cutting the faces in the same orientation needs more emphasis... This is a really cool project.
Agreed. I nearly screwed that part up.
Regards,
Mark
Coming along nicely, I had one of those Domestic Sewerage Treatment Plants on my property at Somerset Dam, they work really well, never had any problems with it, certainly better than a dirty old septic tank like my neighbour had. 👍
I am always amazed by the output from the HSTP. It is clear and chlorinated. Certainly a far cry from what goes in!
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 The guy who installed ours told me the output was 99% drinkable. He told a story about installing one and noticing that next door a little girl was drinking from the purple sprinklers, he had installed that one as well. He was so concerned he went next door and told the little girl's mother what he had seen, she just shrugged it off with "Oh, she does that all the time." 😳
👍
It takes a lot of patience in machining as I have experience. One time I tried to make a small bench vise out of solid material and it was going very well until I drilled the hole to take the lead screw and I drilled it far too big and the acme tap just fell right through it! lol. So I gave up on it because the hole almost went through the walls of the body of the vise! I have no reason why I did this. Why do we do these stupid things lol. Anyway, what a nice job you did. well done
Mistakes happen. I keep all my scrapped parts. It is a reminder to do better next time.
Regards,
Mark
Good idea@@Preso58
Another way to cut a vee in a part is fixture it at 45 degrees so one face of the vee is parallel to the table and the other is vertical. Then use a regular square corner endmill to mill it. I've used this technique to make serrated vise jaws before, rotating the part 90º after doing the first passes, creating a grid of pointy spikes.
I did consider that method but I find it a lot harder to work out the offset from a datum face. In this instance it was really important that all the vees lined up across both jaw faces.
Regards,
Mark
Nice, thanks, Mark. I'm not sure I agree that the V has to have a nice sharp bottom for any reason other than visual appeal. Round bars will never hit the bottom (obviously).
You are absolutely correct but, you know, OCD and all!
Regards,
Mark
Beautiful work! What lubricant were you using when milling the grooves?
Interesting facts about songbirds.
I was using a water soluble oil from a spray bottle. Unfortunately, the coolant in the base tank of the milling machine needs replacing and it's a dirty, smelly job so I am putting it off.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 If only I lived near you. I’d come over and do the dirty work just to hear your stories and see the shop in person.
I’ve been wondering if you could thin down some Anchor lube and put it in a spray bottle.
Indexing the part for cutting the V groove is a great tip! Thx!
What’s the longest arbor you can use? Thinking slab milling.
I think the arbor that I have at present would be about the limit given that there is no end support. I do have a 1 1/2" wide slab mill but I haven't tried it out using the right angle drive. I'd be guessing that the cuts would need to be fairly light.
Regards,
Mark
Dang, sorry Mark I obviously need to pay closer attention.
John 🇨🇦
The US has loons which make a strange ominous sound which many movies use to develop a scene of pending doom.
We have them up in extreme Northern NY, great parents and mates- make humans look silly in comparison! Sounds take a wee bit to get accustomed to, but you can always tell a Loon.
Mark- is it just my ears, or is one portion of the mill doing more than its share of the work? Out of curiosity could you fingernail the cutting edges and confirm or shoot me in the foot? 😮
I am not sure which cutter you are referring to but very few of my milling cutters are new or super sharp. The double angle cutter is fairly new but it's common for cutters like slitting saws and side and face cutters to have some runout so some teeth get a free ride and others do more of the cutting.
Regards,
Mark
Hi Mark, nice job a usual
7:22 why not indicating back face of the cutter and back face of the part? (of course there is more than one way to do this).
BTW... why groves on both jaws?
With grove on only one jaw, you will have 3 point contact, and usualy this is better than 4 point, cos it eliminates eventual misalignment, tolerances, etc...
It probably wasn't apparent from the video but the vertical face of the cutter wouldn't engage on the back face of the part due to the teeth clashing on the vice jaws. With regard to the grooves, I was mostly copying the original design as detailed in the patent drawings. I guess you could grip square work with two opposing grooves that way. One groove would still work though.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58 Ah... of course... My mistake, I made some imposible combination in my head ☺
Funny enough, i have an original float lock vice in a box somehwere in the workshop.. never had a use for it.. mainly cuz its to large. - Are they useful for anything other than novelty?
I guess they are useful in some situations, I will be able to swing mine out of the way fairly easily so for the occasions when you really don't want to have a part climb up the drill bit it might save your fingers.
Regards,
Mark
12:55 don’t you need to stone those tooled groove surfaces?
You could set up as a wildlife tour agent, but I prefer how you make us aware instead.
I will have to do a lot of fettling and surface treatment as the build winds up. I always leave those processes to the end just in case some parts get scrapped or need reworking. Glad you enjoyed the bird song. The butcher birds always make me smile.
Regards,
Mark
Those times when you wish you were a Chinese manufacturer....
Hi do you liver in Qld ??
Yes, top end of the Sunshine Coast.
Regards,
Mark
Would it not be easier to savagely clamp that `floating`` jaw in the vise, at the proper angle, toss in a precision pin in that bore, indicate/center find the bore, chuck in an endmill, swipe the face of the part left to right, as to not push the part held at an angle - due to lack of third real point of contact with the bottom of the vise, spotdrill the cleaned face and drill+tap the hole you are making? No special jigs, no real fancy stuff, just abom grade torque...
You could theoretically make an angle block with a little step in the end of it, as to allow you to slot that in the vise, plop the jaw in it, let it sit in the angled L for the bottom support plane, and of course, the angled holder being just a bit narrower than the jaw itself, it would not interfere with the clamping of the vise jaws on the jaw in the making... The no support block method is sketchier, and if there is one thing a machinist knows, its that unsupported parts always try to riot and are a hazard, both to the machine and the operator, if not merely a failed part in the making, so i would actually go with the slanted L jig, but that is literally an angle block with a fence at the bottom to ease the use thereof...
Also, consider taking that horizontal head apart, blasting the bearings with brake cleaner to purge all the old dead grease from back in the good old days when the thing was first made and uranium was still a part of children`s starter chemistry sets... Get some Kluber spindle grease(dont tell me its pricey, i know it is... i had to kidnap 3 kids for just a tub of it, which tells you that even kids nowadays arent what they used to be, guess its the lack of uranium making them so disappointing) and pack those bearings to 25-30%, even up to 40%, given the slow speed of the head operation and its relatively long resting intervals, as to allow more grease to better cover the surfaces and protect from rust(rusty spindle bearings... nightmare fuel...), following Rob-Renz`s instructions regarding such activities..
And damn is that powerfeed loud in manual drive... My big mill is literally made to compete with the Bridgeport, and hell if the swiss didnt take everything into account... No hate on the bridgeport, i want one(tho, i dont have space for one, what with 11 other machines), but that gearbox when turned by hand is a bloody racket, sounds like a slipped chain on a bicycle at high speed, just without the crash and pained screaming shortly thereafter...
Regarding the project so far, damn is it shaping up nicely! Well, milling up, given your lack of a shaper, but you get my point... I still find it inferior to a large 2pcs vise with its own plate, given the use on the drill press, which can shift the table and rotate it to get the part into position as quickly, but with tremendously more grip in case of a mounted vise, but i have to admit, a float lock vise, with you following the original design - looks great!
All the best and kindest regards!
Steuss
You will be able to see in the next episode (I am actually nearly finished) how I got around the positioning for drilling and tapping the locking pin hole. That part went really well. I find that nearly all my machines are noisy. The Colchester lathe has straight cut gears as does most of the Bridgeport drive so they are always going to sound a bit harsh. I wondered whether there was something wrong with the X axis power feed but I have noticed a lot of others that sound the same or worse so I guess it is just the way they are made.
Regards,
Mark
@@Preso58Nah, those add on feedboxes are universally loud... The Colchester is a fine lady, dont you dare speak ill of her snoring, she just likes to be comfortable in her own home... :P
You could maybe snag a train of helix gears to replace the feedbox gears for the mill... That should quieten that chatterbox a lot... Take a junked car gearbox or two, especially from very small cars like twingo`s and such bullshit that run on 1.2l engines... They have helical gears, the gears are proper steel as they are moving a car afterall, you just bore them out, bush the bore, fit them to the feedbox and voila, a silent, proper geared feedbox for the mill that wont make a sound pretty much, regardless of its operational mode... I have a small gearbox like that waiting for some similar project... The reverse is flat cuts, but the rest is helical cut... You can get a nice set of great gears from such a box for almost free, and often they gears are supremely healthy, its just the synchromesh that gets crunched to chunks...
Regarding the vise, i gladly await the results... I have enough projects on hand, so i wont get bored between now and then :)
All the best!