Well in the spirit of DIY(plus I,m outta money and business is slow, so this makes a fun project for the weekend) . I,m planning on making a milling vice, The base will be 3/4 steel 7 1/2" long and 3"wide, the jaws 1" square and opening 4 1/2". I need this so I can mill new side millhead plates for my manual mill. I,ll post some pics tonite.Heres a hint for my fellow novices, for the base I needed to square up a large chunk 3/4 steel by clamping, so I draw out 7 1/2" x 3" in the center of a 12" x 5" chunk , I clamped it down and proceeded to mill me out a flat surface just in the center that I,ve drawn, then flip it over and flat out the other side, then just cut off all the unmilled sections, now I have two parallel sides as reference points, now this piece can fit in my smaller milling vice to be squared out. I know if I had a larger milling vice that this could have been done differently but ya got make do with what ya got.....

let me re-clarify my earlier novice hint. That only works if ya have enough parallels running under your work piece. I soon found out that I was wrong in assuming there was no way I could cause 3/4 steel to bend by tightning clamps but ya can by as much as .008. So I spent most of the day correcting that. Also in the process I learned that for finishing cuts on steel it seemed like a 2 flute did better than the 4 flute( which is wierd becuz everyone says 2 flutes for aluminum and 4 flutes for steel) However in the end I ended up using 4 flutes. Anyway I would have grabbed some pics but I was so exhuasted after I was done today on just the base the vice that I couldn,t muster the energy to snap some pics. I,ll do it tomorrow when I got a real precision work piece to show off.

Well a little progress was made after several metal splinters(ouch) I managed to produce this http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=21436&stc=1
100_1020.jpg
That will be the base and the piece on top the moveable jaw. More to come....

.... I was wrong in assuming there was no way I could cause 3/4 steel to bend by tightning clamps but ya can by as much as .008. So I spent most of the day correcting that......

If you are working with cold rolled steel some of the bending can occur because machining relieves some of the stress that is in the material from the cold working when it is made. As an example if you take a piece of cold rolled steel 2" wide and 1/2" thick and machine it down to 7/16" thick it may warp up to 1/16" over the length. Hot rolled steel is a much better material to use because there are no residual stresses in the material.

Hmmm, I really don,t know what exactly type of steel it is. I do know it came from a place that does steel erecting(big metal commercial bldgs and warehouses) and the price was good. I think also if I remember correctly that if ya rough mill cold rolled and then let it sit a few days before ya finish mill it that will cure some that warping , it was just something I remember reading somewhere about.

Structural steel is A-36 - hot rolled.

Scott

Project now on hold as I have to tear my milling table down and clean it up and put it together so I can get into .001 spec. When I move it side to side it stays within .001 but front to back it goes out to .0025 not real bad but I want my stuff to at the least be within .001. On the flat base when I went to finish mill it I believe this is what caused a .003 hump in the middle which I filed down to within .001(lot a work)

Thanx m, I had no clue but now I,m a happy camper becuz I now have a good cheap source for it, and I bought enough to keep me busy for little bit anyway.

Well an enjoyable Sunday at the shop, heres a little progress on the vise http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=21891&stc=1

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=21892&stc=1

Still need to mill a slot on each end so I can stick a 1/4 square keystock in to tie it together and 4 more holes for bolts. The four holes in the center are laid out to my mill table so I can set it up each way and it tie into the table. More to come....

Did you do the vice parts machining on your homebuilt mill? Looks good.

Yeah but as I was milling the table got out square so to get the base part flat I had to do so hand filing. But all the holes and the slot was don on the mill. Yeah drilling multiple holes is so much easier on a mill or at least a milling table.

Well done for now, its not as accurate a vise as I would like to have but it will do its first job just fine. http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22195&stc=1&d=1157247596
vise1.JPG

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22196&stc=1&d=1157247596
vise2.JPG

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=22197&stc=1&d=1157247596
vise3.JPG