Steel plate. Annealed or Not

12bolts

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1st up excuse the rough CAD drawing.:disillusion:
I am going to make a shaper vise. I have some 50 mm thick, hot rolled (i think) plate to use for the main base of the vise. I need to flame cut it from a bigger chunk and machine it down to make the flanged, and slotted base.
Basically something like this.
Vise1.jpg
What is the general consensus here? Do I, or should I, fully anneal this before I start milling it out? After its been roughed out, but not fitted with the jaws and such? As, needing to be hand fitted. Do you think there will be a lot of internal stresses released with this amount of material removed?
Approx. dimensions are 200 mm W x 250 mm L x 50 mm H at the max and around 10-15 mm H at the flange.
The central slot will be roughly 30 mm wide. I plan on fitting a bearing and nut to the rear, (front view) for the sliding jaw, and keying the fixed jaw in position.

Cheers Phil
 
No ....it's not hard to begin with. Case hardening when completed would be nice. May cause some warpage that would need ground flat after hardening.
 
If you are flame cutting, the combination of carbon introduced from the flame and rapid cooling from the cutting process will create a thin layer of hardened steel. If I rough out a piece with the torch, I always grind the edge back. Check with a file before machining.
 
At least you can use CAD...

Hot rolled steel is not full of stresses like cold rolled or hardened steel. It should stay pretty stable with machining to size. Even annealing can leave some stresses in the metal, especially if not done to a high standard. Make sure you feel good that it is actually hot rolled steel. RJ's advice is good, machine away all the stresses caused by the flame cutting, leave it oversize for that.
 
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Hot rolled is more stable than cold rolled but I'd machine it to rough dimensions leaving 30 or 40 thou oversize. With the bulk of the material removed do your finished passes to size.

Greg
 
As said,hot rolled is not going to warp and cause problems like cold rolled will since it is not so full of stresses that are released when machining. However, hot rolled does not cut as nice and smooth as cold rolled.

For your project,I definitely would go with hot rolled. And DO check flame cut areas for very hard, tool ruining hardened areas from the flame cutting. They can really ruin your day.
 
I would not think any pre machining heat treat is necessary, others have covered the hard edges created by flame cutting.

I might suggest carbide tooling to deal with hard areas and prevent ruining a HSS cutter.

I'd also rough then cut to finish size in two steps to help with any distortion due to material removal.

I'm not certain there will be any but preventing it is worth the extra time vs. starting over.


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1st up excuse the rough CAD drawing.:disillusion:
I am going to make a shaper vise. I have some 50 mm thick, hot rolled (i think) plate to use for the main base of the vise. I need to flame cut it from a bigger chunk and machine it down to make the flanged, and slotted base.
Basically something like this.
View attachment 225945
What is the general consensus here? Do I, or should I, fully anneal this before I start milling it out? After its been roughed out, but not fitted with the jaws and such? As, needing to be hand fitted. Do you think there will be a lot of internal stresses released with this amount of material removed?
Approx. dimensions are 200 mm W x 250 mm L x 50 mm H at the max and around 10-15 mm H at the flange.
The central slot will be roughly 30 mm wide. I plan on fitting a bearing and nut to the rear, (front view) for the sliding jaw, and keying the fixed jaw in position.

Cheers Phil

Phil, is the plate stock small enough to install on a mill table. I have made 3 vices so far from 5/8" flat stock. I clamped the work to the table with 3/4" MDF backing underneath. I milled the perimeter to dimension first. Then laid out any holes or slots and milled those while the stock was still clamped. There was some change in flatness that I milled out before assembly. I used cast iron for two milling vices and 6061 aluminum for a small vice to sit on a bench.
I would think your steel is already annealed. If you can draw a file easily it is annealed .

mike
 
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