VISE JAWS

[vegas705]

I have always wordered about this, How many of you make your own jaws complete or buy blanks if not would you buy blanks if they were high quality and made of steel.

Thanks for you time

[Dualkit]

I use vise jaws of various sizes. I always make my own, the major reason I seem to run a lot of jobs that the bar stock remnants are perfect to make jaws from.

[Shotout]

Originally Posted by vegas705 I have always wordered about this, How many of you make your own jaws complete or buy blanks if not would you buy blanks if they were high quality and made of steel. Thanks for you time

Most of ours are alum so water jet some plate that is flat to .002/ft and a cold cut saw blanks them out nicely. One old fadal 4020 and a fixture that is mounted most of the time and you have holes and c'bores.

If we used more steel jaws we'd buy them if they where of consistent material quality, had a good machinability factor and had a decent tolerance on flatness and sizes.

Thinking of starting a business venture?

[vegas705]

Originally Posted by Shotout Most of ours are alum so water jet some plate that is flat to .002/ft and a cold cut saw blanks them out nicely. One old fadal 4020 and a fixture that is mounted most of the time and you have holes and c'bores. If we used more steel jaws we'd buy them if they where of consistent material quality, had a good machinability factor and had a decent tolerance on flatness and sizes. Thinking of starting a business venture?

Thought about it I make all of my jaws from 1018 the are pricey but work well and are consistant as well as strong and rigid

[dertsap]

most places I've work we'd make hundreds of pairs of steel and aluminum soft jaws as one of those filler jobs when times were slow , then we'd rapidly eat them up when things picked up

[Korellibopper]

I thought you meant Lathe chuck jaws we got them for 40 for steel jaws. Anyways for our shop we buy em less then 20 bucks a pair for vice jaws we cant make it for that.

[sp4i6]

mostly make our own. the shapes of the items we make demands customability.

[metalgasher]

i cant remember working anywhere that bought soft jaws for a millvise but ive only been in the business since 1990. it seems to me that anyone can buy some 1"x2"x12' bar and blast out 12 pairs in an hour and hardly bust a swet.now im no astronaught but i think thats about 5 dollars a jaw.so if there's someone out there selling them for less than that i would love to hear from them

[TWyatt9]

I make all my own vise jaws we can crank these out so fast that it doesn't pay to buy them. Three jaw chuck jaws are a different story. i found the guys at Monster Jaws on EBay 33 bucs for a set of serated jaws to fit a 10 in CNC chuck is unbeatable. The jaws look fantastic you almost don't want to cut them up. LOL LOL Just my Two cents thats only worth about 1/2 cent these days. Tim @ PPM Inc

[Dave Wharton]

Monster is the only way to go. I buy them ten sets at a time, in 4 and six inch.

[mally38]

we have some hard jaws but we make our own soft jaws, and serated jaws we harding

[Dualkit]

If you are thinking about making jaws to sell you are obviously going to need to make lathe chuck jaws, it seems myself and everyone else makes their own jaws for our mills. I make my own mill jaws and buy my lathe jaws, even the lathe jaw industry seems to have a lot of players. Most of us don't have the tools or the patience to make the serrations. For what it is worth, I pay $25 a set for standard (not the pie type) for 6" Kitagawa chucks, I believe you would have to undercut that price to even have a chance of grabbing any market share. Good luck to you if you are still interested in producing jaws for sale.