- Joined
- Dec 30, 2020
- Messages
- 54
The time had come for some upgrades to the 5" mill vise. I never made keys for the vise and the vise closer with the universal joint has always driven me insane. It is super cumbersome, gets in the way and due to its shape and the nature of moment arms and gravity it would fall CCW at inopportune times... like fine adjusting of parts or fixtures where I needed the ability to lightly tap things into position and have some clamping force hold until it was indicated. So I modded a cheap off the shelf hand wheel from amazon and machined some keys.
None of this is earth shattering or even very pretty, but the quality of life improvements are off the charts for me. The hand wheel is very fast and smooth and applies sufficient clamping force for many operations and the keys allow me to set the vise in place and be within .001" of trammed pretty much without even trying.
This is the hand wheel I purchased.
Getting it mounted and indicated was bit of an art as the plastic wheel nor the aluminum insert were concentric or perfect circles. I am sure more advanced folks have their own approaches to how to accomplish this but I used the rotary table function to indicate a spot then rotate it and check the other side, move adjust then re-clamp and rinse and repeat until I was as close to centered as I could expect with this factory part. This aligned the part to the rotary table then I could indicate the center of the aluminum insert to the spindle center.
After that it was just a bit of math and a matter of DRO hawking to get the six sides to proper dimensions.
To get into the corners I hacked at them with a triangle file. This kind of ruined the finish of the flats but worked pretty fast. Maybe I need a 1mm end mill...
Fit is really actually pretty nice and more importantly it works super nice. I no longer have to worry about hit the y-axis hand wheel with the old universal joint vise handle or it falling open.
Keys installed.
None of this is earth shattering or even very pretty, but the quality of life improvements are off the charts for me. The hand wheel is very fast and smooth and applies sufficient clamping force for many operations and the keys allow me to set the vise in place and be within .001" of trammed pretty much without even trying.
This is the hand wheel I purchased.
Getting it mounted and indicated was bit of an art as the plastic wheel nor the aluminum insert were concentric or perfect circles. I am sure more advanced folks have their own approaches to how to accomplish this but I used the rotary table function to indicate a spot then rotate it and check the other side, move adjust then re-clamp and rinse and repeat until I was as close to centered as I could expect with this factory part. This aligned the part to the rotary table then I could indicate the center of the aluminum insert to the spindle center.
After that it was just a bit of math and a matter of DRO hawking to get the six sides to proper dimensions.
To get into the corners I hacked at them with a triangle file. This kind of ruined the finish of the flats but worked pretty fast. Maybe I need a 1mm end mill...
Fit is really actually pretty nice and more importantly it works super nice. I no longer have to worry about hit the y-axis hand wheel with the old universal joint vise handle or it falling open.
Keys installed.