Milling Rite

I found some better prices on surface plates - still B-grade, but only $100 for shipping instead of $200 - but I can still only fit a 12" by 18" in my workspace...and that's about the same size as the base of the vise, so I'm not sure of how much use it will be in regards to flattening.

On a different note, I've gone down a serious rabbit hole regarding insert tooling. It's not something that I know a great deal about, so it's been interesting to start learning it. Finding concise information on it is kind of difficult, though; everything is written far above my current level of comprehension.
 
You can get empty metal paint cans from Home Depot. That’s what I use for my quenching oil. I think they have quart and gallon sizes.

I’m glad you are seeing improvement, but disappointed it is not solved. The surface plate size is not ideal, but will probably work well enough to check the underside. I have a 12x18 plate and used that to check my cheap Chinese vise, but it was only a 4” and your looks bigger than that.
 
Dave Bonzo said:
I can still only fit a 12" by 18" in my workspace...and that's about the same size as the base of the vise, so I'm not sure of how much use it will be in regards to flattening.
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Even if your vice will hang over just a bit it will still work. You don't need to move the work very much when looking for highs & lows. & that size will work for a lot of what most people do for scribing layouts.
 
Ischgl99 said:
You can get empty metal paint cans from Home Depot. That’s what I use for my quenching oil. I think they have quart and gallon sizes.
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I used to have a stainless quart can that I stole from the paint lab at work several years ago; it worked well and it was free, but that was because I stole it. I'm sure a replacement will only cost a few hundred dollars.

Ischgl99 said:
I’m glad you are seeing improvement, but disappointed it is not solved. The surface plate size is not ideal, but will probably work well enough to check the underside. I have a 12x18 plate and used that to check my cheap Chinese vise, but it was only a 4” and your looks bigger than that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was hoping that I'd have it done by now, but that's not to be...so, hopefully I can make a 12" x 18" plate work. I know a larger one would be better, but I just don't have the space right now.

Also, yeah, it's a large vise for some reason. It doesn't really fit the table.

Larry$ said:
Even if your vice will hang over just a bit it will still work. You don't need to move the work very much when looking for highs & lows. & that size will work for a lot of what most people do for scribing layouts.
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That's what I was hoping; make it work for this particular task and then just work within its envelope.

Also, I have another slight issue, now: I found there's about .001" of difference in the vertical plane when I traverse the vise. The indicator shows a reasonably even change on the needle throughout the 6" of movement, so I'm reasonably sure that it's because the bottom isn't entirely flat and/or parallel to the top. I guess I can shim that?
 
Are you still mounting the vise in the front slot? If so, try the middle slot and see if that helps. You’ll have some of the vise hanging off the back, even my 4” hangs off the back, but not really much of a way around that.
 
Ischgl99 said:
Are you still mounting the vise in the front slot?
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Middle slot, now. I gave up on the front slot because of the instability.

Ischgl99 said:
If so, try the middle slot and see if that helps. You’ll have some of the vise hanging off the back, even my 4” hangs off the back, but not really much of a way around that.
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It hangs SO FAR off the back...

I guess I can compensate a bit by shifting the head, but I still run out of Y-axis, and quickly.
 
Dave Bonzo said:
I guess I can compensate a bit by shifting the head, but I still run out of Y-axis, and quickly.
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Yeah, that’s why I went with a 4” vise. A 5” would have been fine in hindsight since I plan on moving the DRO scale from the front to the back, but a 6” looked huge on my mill.
 
Jaws on this one are 6.25", with almost an 8" opening. I think it's 150-ish by 200mm.
 
Weldingrod1 said:
You can saw off the back mounting ear and coolant trough... that's what I did
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I need the trough, though...and probably a few more troughs as well, because I'm not good at keeping messes contained. Hell, I've been staring at the mill for three weeks trying to figure out how to keep any forthcoming murder confetti from devouring my entire garage. No good solutions thus far.
 
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