Author Topic: Modifying a pair of drill press vices  (Read 667 times)

Offline springcrocus

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 117
    • Steve's Britannia
Modifying a pair of drill press vices
« on: February 04, 2023, 09:18:24 AM »
Whilst reading a post by Brendon M about horizontal milling feeds and speeds, I suddenly thought - I've seen that vice before! That triggered a memory of a conversion I did to a pair of drill press vices about six or seven years ago.

Having a need to hold some long flat bar on the mill, but with funds very low, I purchased a pair of cheap drill press vices from Toolstation (a budget tool supplier chain in the UK) a few years ago. They were pretty rough and ready, definitely not square or level but they were made of cast iron so I decided to re-machine them as a matched pair for general purpose milling jobs.



I first spent ten minutes or so on each one flatting the bases on some wet and dry on my surface table and then dismantled them to leave the main casting. The jaw facings they provided were just strips of some unknown gash material as were the sliding jaw catchplates. Those went straight in the bin, along with the fixing screws.



I trued them up as best I could on the mill and machined the slideways first, the difference in heights being seen by the size of the chips on each one. Then I put the large angle plate up and milled for a clean-up on the two sides followed by squaring up and milling the front and back.



That gave me the option of aligning the vices using a square or butting up to my tee-slot packers if I don't need super accuracy. In hindsight, it would have been smart to do this set of operations first.



Next, I trued each one up in turn and milled the fixed-jaw face for a complete clean-up and also made the lower step where the jaws sit exactly the same height as the slideway. This picture shows just how rough the as-bought machining is! I was also going to give the insides of the slideways a quick lick to square them up but I didn't have enough travel to do them in this setup. In the end, I didn't bother, it's the least important part of the whole job.



Once the machining of the upper surfaces was complete, I then machined the underside of the slideway. This needed to be dead parallel to the upper surface of the slideway so that the jaw catchplate rode smoothly along the underside while the sliding jaw moved along the bedway without jamming. The more accurate this part is, the less jaw lift there will be during tightening. The picture shows them clamped on a pair of parallels.



Then it was time to machine the sliding jaw castings. To start, I bolted the existing jaw faces to my small angle plate and machined the top to get them reasonably square to the jaw faces. These were then clamped to the mill table and the two sliding surfaces machined followed by re-positioning and milling the catchplate mounting to size. I have left these a couple of thou proud of the vice body as mentioned above and will lap these down later to suit each vice.



The jaw-mounting faces were the last to be machined, the castings being mounted in a small vice and skimmed to clean up. Then it was time to deburr all round and give each of the machined faces a bit of a rub on some wet and dry before offering each jaw to the main casting and checking for a nice sliding fit. It was at this point that it became obvious that the clamping-screw hole in the sliding jaw was about forty thou lower than before and would need bushing and each jaw was mounted back on the mill, the hole clocked out and then the table moved to the offset position. A 5/8" dia slot drill was then plunged down to the original depth. Meanwhile, on the lathe, a pair of brass bushes were made from 5/8" dia bar, drilled 3/8" and parted off. These were then loctited into the sliding jaws and left to set, followed by drilling through the existing retaining screw holes and tapping M5.



The ends of the clamping screws were also in poor order so I cut off the front section completely and then remachined them with flat ends and the retaining undercut in the correct place.
Finally, a length of 3/4" x 3/16" ground flat stock was cut up to provide two sets of hard jaws and two underside catchplates. The holes in the jaws have the same side-to-side spacing as before but had to be compensated for in the vertical plane to allow for the material removed during milling and are held in place with M5 countersunk screws.



To see how much jaw lift I had, I nipped up a parallel in each vice in turn, set a clock on the moving jaw and then tightened up fully. Originally the deflection was in the region of three to five thou on each but after a few sessions back and forth on the surface plate, I've got that down to about a thou. On one, I went a tad too far and the jaw locked up but a polish of the slideway underside freed it off.

And after all that faffing around, I had a matched pair of milling vices that didn't cost an arm and a leg. The final picture shows them being used in that manner for the first time.



I've used them quite a lot in subsequent years and well worth the £15 each that I paid for them and the time taken to modify them.

Regards, Steve
Member of a local model engineers society
www.stevesbritannia.co.uk

Offline Charles Lamont

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 321
Re: Modifying a pair of drill press vices
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2023, 10:38:28 AM »
As we don't have the facility here: "Like."

Offline ShopShoe

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 462
  • Central Iowa, Central USA
Re: Modifying a pair of drill press vices
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2023, 01:59:59 PM »
Congratulations on a nice little project.

I did  something similar to a single 6-inch one a few years ago to make a bench vice for filing and other operations. In my case the original vice casting was seriously warped before I started in on it.

There is something satisfying about making a useful shop accessory from something that should never have got to the store.

More cases where what one buys is really a "kit" for what might be needed.

Thank You for posting.

ShopShoe

Online Kim

  • Global Moderator
  • Full Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7860
  • Portland, Oregon, USA
Re: Modifying a pair of drill press vices
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2023, 04:11:53 PM »
That's a great project!  As ShopShoe said, you purchased a set of castings!  :popcorn:
Thanks for taking the time to share this.

Kim

 

SimplePortal 2.3.5 © 2008-2012, SimplePortal