# Fixed my Chinese Vice



## Mr. Kelly (Feb 3, 2013)

I'm just starting out with machining, and I bought myself a cheap Chinese vice. Yes, I know, I know.  Shoulda bought a Kurt.  I didn't think the Chinese one would be that bad, and hey, it looked good in the catalog!  I actually ended up with two, as one supplier forgot to cancel my order after I called, so he gave it to me at cost.

So I've got two Chinese vices.  One looks better than the other.  The second is an even worse casting than the first, the grinding is pathetic, and the fit and finish is sloppy.  
After having a little trouble squaring up some material in it, I took a few minutes to run an indicator over the nice looking one and found something like 0.005" side to side across the bed and 0.014" variation overall.  The ugly one is only out a few thou.  

I did a little looking around for information on what sort of luck people have had with fixing up their junk vices.  I found very little, but I did find this which was very helpful.
http://www.docsmachine.com/projects/4vise/4vise-01.html
My vice was a bit better built than this guy's, but was out much more in tolerances.  I figured this would be good opportunity to learn and practice a little.  I made a plan to disassemble the components and cut them down to flat and parallel with a 2" face mill (don't have a fly cutter yet).  I don't have a surface grinder so I tried looking into options to make do with what I have to clean things up.  After reading a bunch about how everyone says not to grind on a milling machine, I decided I'd try it anyway and mitigate as much as I could by taking it easy, covering up the ways really well, and vacuuming lots.  

I used a 4" cup to grind.  I cut the head off a 5/8" grade 8 bolt, threaded it onto the cup with a lock nut, and chucked it in the spindle with a collet.  I was surprised at how true it actually ran.  
It worked OK.  Not ideal, but OK.  It tends to clog quickly, even worse with coolant, and is not quick at all.  It took a lot of time working slowly over the surfaces.  I learned that when it starts making good contact, there's a lot of grinding surface touching metal, and builds up a fair bit of friction, and therefore heat.  The heat is a factor and I was surprised at how much the CI moved.  
I found that I had to work in the tenths range with the cup, and the heat generated definitely moved the CI a few tenths.  I found that I could work with that and control heat build up by varying my feed.  If I let the cup linger a little longer in one spot, the metal would swell up and the cup would dig in a little more.  Towards the end, I was controlling this to my advantage instead of fighting it.  It was pretty neat.  

There's a reason that surface grinders use a wheel in a vertical orientation.  The flat cup is not ideal, but I did get it to work OK. I cleaned and vacuumed lots because I was really nervous about grit and CI in the mill's ways.  So it does work in a pinch, but it's not something I'm going to make a habit of.

In the end I got everything nicely trued up.  I'm within half a thou for parallel and square and straight.  I can live with that.  I didn't do much with the movable jaw, just cleaned up the sliding surfaces and that angle that the little half-ball fits against with a file.  There's still no question that it's a cheap Chinese vice; it' no Kurt, that's for sure.  But at least now I've got a level base to work from.  I've got about 10 hours into it, I could do it in half that if I were to do it over, and I'm sure you pros out there could do it in half that again.

Here's a little video of how it went.
[video=youtube;oKXyd78lcR4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKXyd78lcR4[/video]


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## revrnd (Feb 3, 2013)

I've found the following issues w/ the 6" swivel vise that was included in the milling package I bought from King last year. The "pointer" for the degree scale was out several degrees & the hex on the jaw screw is under sze. Added to the oversize of the internal hex of the handle, it's quite sloppy. I haven't delved any deeper (Maybe afraid to) after reading the link.


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## Mr. Kelly (Feb 4, 2013)

I got one from KBC and the second one was from King.  The King was the one that looks like crap, but was actually truer than the KBC.  Both have the same undersized hex/oversized handle problem.  Now that I've got this one nice, I'm going to tackle the King.  I'm not sure what they used to grind it, but you can clearly see that the grinding wheel was run laterally across, so the surface is scalloped.  The casting is really rough, with holes in it, so we'll see what I get out of it.  My pointer was off too, but I'm not using the the little keys on the bottom.  I'll lock it on zero and then indicate the jaw to parallel, and then clamp the swivel base to the table.


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## revrnd (Feb 4, 2013)

Mr. Kelly said:


> but I'm not using the the little keys on the bottom. I'll lock it on zero and then indicate the jaw to parallel, and then clamp the swivel base to the table.



Same here. I thought those keys were WAYYY undersized. Brother (my consultant) suggested m/cing a 5/8" slot in the base to fit the T slot. I'm thinking the supplied keys were 3/8" square?


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## Mr. Kelly (Feb 4, 2013)

revrnd said:


> Same here. I thought those keys were WAYYY undersized. Brother (my consultant) suggested m/cing a 5/8" slot in the base to fit the T slot. I'm thinking the supplied keys were 3/8" square?



Yah, something like 3/8".  They were so small, it took a while before I figured out what the little bag of steel bits was for! 
 I've heard of guys clamping a piece of protruding 5/8" stock in the vice jaws, zeroing the swivel, turning the vice upside down and dropping the protruding stock into the T-slot.  That aligns the jaws to the table so that you can mill out the keyway parallel to the table.  I'm going to try this.

-kelly


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## Hawkeye (Feb 4, 2013)

Mr K. When you're doing your second vise, consider checking the height of both at the ways. It is quite handy to use two vises sometimes for larger pieces, but you really want to have them the same height.


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## Mr. Kelly (Feb 5, 2013)

Hawkeye said:


> Mr K. When you're doing your second vise, consider checking the height of both at the ways. It is quite handy to use two vises sometimes for larger pieces, but you really want to have them the same height.



Yah, I was thinking that would be awesome if they were, but unfortunately, they're two different animals.  If I recall correctly, I think there's about a half inch of difference.  I don't think I have the meat to spare.  With the size of trucks and machines I have, I know there's going to come a day when I'm sitting there thinking, "you know, if I had a matched set of vices, this would be really easy..."  

Maybe I can come up with a special spacer for under the low one.


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## Hawkeye (Feb 5, 2013)

I you can get it to an accurate 3/8" or 1/2", shimming the low one would be fairly easy. Mine were only about 1/8" different, so matching them was no problem.


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## revrnd (Feb 6, 2013)

Mr. Kelly said:


> Yah, something like 3/8". They were so small, it took a while before I figured out what the little bag of steel bits was for!
> I've heard of guys clamping a piece of protruding 5/8" stock in the vice jaws, zeroing the swivel, turning the vice upside down and dropping the protruding stock into the T-slot. That aligns the jaws to the table so that you can mill out the keyway parallel to the table. I'm going to try this.
> 
> -kelly



That's exactly what we did.

Brother has a lot more experience as a machinist than me. He gets frustrated @ times watching me. He's been around machinery a lot more than me. He's full time m/cing since '87 ('81 if you include high school). My time on a lathe or mill @ work was more "hack & slash" m/cing parts to suit during repairs and/or rework. Heck since I got my lathe last year I've turned 2 threads. That's probably more than I've did @ work since my apprentice days. LOL


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## Mr. Kelly (Feb 10, 2013)

So last week I took a look at the second vice.  This is the one that 'looked' rougher, but was more accurate.  I pulled the thing apart and can't for the life of me figure out how they got any sort of accuracy out of it at all.  It is so rough, it's not even funny.  The key/keyway on the fixed jaw has 0.020 slop in it, and the key is just an unmilled chunk of hot rolled.  The bottom of the movable jaw is still caked with casting sand that never got cleaned off, and was just painted over.  They didn't clean the sand out of the little pocket that the half-round ball sits into, they just added grease.  I could go on and on...

So this one's going to take a lot more work than the last.

The good thing is that I checked the bed heights and they're actually really close to the same.  Unfortunately, it's the one that I've finished that's higher, so I'll have to pull it back apart to match the two up.  Oh, well.  It'll be worth it in the end.

-kelly


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