New Mill Vise - Help Me Choose!!

[lpeedin]

I have recently purchases a larger mill with a table size of 7.5" x 27" and along with that purchase, I picked up an "inexpensive" Chinese mill vise. I knew ahead of time that it wouldn't be perfect, and it wasn't terrible. However, I have been messing with it trying to square it up and have had reasonable success. However, I am thinking that I need to go ahead and buy a nicer vise.

With that said, I am not planning to spend Kurt Or Glacern money on a new vise. And yes, I am going to buy a new vise as used and machine accessories don't often work out. What I have narrowed my choices down to at the 440V from Shars and the 4" "Professional" series vise from Little Machine Shop.

The specs are pretty similar, with the Shars offering .0005" tolerance on bottom to ways parallelism, vise fixed jaw to key slot, and perpendicularity of jaws to ways. The LMS Professional says .0003" over 4" for ways to bottom parallelism, and .0004" perpendicularity of jaws to ways over 4". The big difference is that the LMS Professional comes with a swivel base, which I would actually use from time to time.

I have talked to the guys at LMS and their professional vise is from HHiP. They say it is a great vise and that they have visited the factory where they are made and everythng is top notch. The Shars vise has a good review on Youtube, but I haven't found much else on either vise.

What do you guys think?

 

[TomS]

I just bought a CNC vise off eBay for $108 and free shipping. It was the least expensive one I could find. My goal was to see what you get when buying on price alone. As expected it wasn't visually perfect but not bad. When I bolted it down to the mill table and ran an indicator over the sliding surfaces the indicator needle barely moved. It was flat and the same height within about .0005" (yes that's three zero's). Only time will tell how well it performs long term. All in all I'm quite pleased.

Tom S

 

[TIGL]

I have the 3" version of that LMS and its served me just fine. I usually leave the swivel base off since it eats up about an inch of z travel but I have used it occasionally.

 

[royesses]

I have the LMS HHIP 4 inch. It is a solid vise and the machining is very good. The jaws come together close enough that my son thought it was one piece of steel. I use it without the swivel base to gain clearance on my mini mill. I would definitely purchase it again if I needed to replace it.