Soft jaws

[Brad]

I want a set of soft jaws for the mill vise. A vertical V groove or 2 will be added. I have Asmara eat of v blocks I can use but they have too wide and deep of a groove to hold smaller parts and are also hardened so they dent softer material.
I started with a 3” wide chunk of Al. Used the Sawzall to cut roughly to length and then split it down the middle. Leaves a rough cut but the flycutter doesn’t seem to care.
Flycut the sawed edges then faced all other sides. I flycut the two sides with the parts side by side in the vise so they came out the same. I then faced the two faces and left the mill setup the same when doing the final face so they are the same thickness.
Ends were cleaned up with a 1/2” endmill. Used my new mill stop to make them the same length.

Now I need to make a 45° angle block, do some layout, and make my grooves. I will probably mill the sides so I have a lip that rests on top of the vise jaw to hold the soft jaw roughly in place.

 

[Ian]

Interested in the vee-groove process. I was imagining one of these and a regular spiral-flute end mill.

 

[KeithB]

Depending on how big a groove you need I might think about getting a 1/2” diameter 90* V point drillmill.

 

[fiver]

I was thinking some delrin, or some silicone.

 

[Brad]

Keith, I looked at cutter like that. Yikes, they are spendy. If I was making a bunch of these it would make sense but 75 bucks or more too rich for my needs.

Much of this is a learning process for me. I want to see what works and what doesn’t. So far it seems to be mostly works.

I did some layout and decided to get the 45° angle block made first. A little chunk of 1/8” Al and some determinitstion. A video online told me what I needed to do, thanks Joe. Drill a hole, go over 1.25” and up 1.25”. Place a snug pin, gauge pins worked for me, in the holes and place them across the vise jaws. Mill off the portion of plate sticking up and you end up with a 45° angle plate.

 

[Brad]

With the angle plate made I layer put the width of the groove in each jaw along with a centerline. I made the v wider in one jaw than the other as I want to be able to hold smaller pieces if need arises.

Here you can see the angle plate being used to set the vise jaw at 45°.


I eyeballed the cutter so it just cut the one I scribed on one side of the V. I cut until the bottom of the V hit the centerline I scribed. Worked pretty well.

 

[Brad]

I then cut away a portion of the outside of each jaw to create a lip that sits on the top of the vise jaw. I should have cut these deeper but they work. Deeper would have helped them stay on the jaws to make set up easier.

Here are the finished jaws. I think they are going to work quite well.

 

[Brad]

Here is a short video of cutting the sides of the jaws. This was a .050 deep cut with a 2 flute end 1/2” end mill. The power feed is awesome to have.

 

[KeithB]

Without power feed you will end up with one arm like Popeye.

 

[Pistolero]

The angle block tip is really good. Having taught trig to adults and tutored it, that
little book looks good for the non-trig person.

And useful jaws you made, Brad.

Bill

 

[Ian]

Thanks to one of Joe Pi's videos, I had no trouble learning to set my lathe compound angle precisely. Do a little sohcahtoa and dial in the measurements. Adjust until it comes out on the numbers. This is how I cut accurate throat angles on die reamers. Using your machine dials and readouts like precision measuring tools was painfully obvious....once it was pointed out to me! As a newbie that concept was a big aHA! moment.

 

[freebullet]

Nice work, Brad.