Drill Kurt Vice?

[GKman]

Saw this on Carl's Jeep carburetor thread. Don't want to drill my Kurt vice but the tapped hole for the hold-down clamp sure looks handy. Any thoughts?

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...m/PC050010.jpg

[Michael Edwards]

Make new jaws with the tapped holes you want.

ME

[ZINOM]

^^^ yup.

John

[bborr01]

See post 898 in the "shop made tools" thread.

Clamping fixture.

Brian

[rkepler]

Like the others I think the hole is tapped in some jaws. But it sure looks to me that they are functioning more as parallels than jaws, unless they're screwed into the vise jaws somehow.

But the real question is this: why bother with resisting vertical forces when they aren't any? It looks to be jigged up for some face milling and not heavy drilling and it would seem to me that just chucking in the vise would be enough.

If I have work that I don't want to bother with clamping to the table I just clamp a sacrificial plate in the vise and clamp to it. Here's a shot of one that's about used up:



The advantages are that you can always take a skim cut to make sure that it's flat, drill & mill clearance anywhere, tap holes for clamping, etc. Usually when I have a one-off fixturing problem I use something like this, if there's a lot more I use soft jaws in the chuck either directly.

[Dan Dubeau]

I use sacrificial plate a lot as we generate a lot of scrap 1" tooling plate, in odd sizes, too small to be usefull for other things, and too big to blindly toss in the scrap bin. I always try and find a use for them before the scrappy gets them.

In the original picture it's a v block clamped in the vise, and the hold down is holding a round chunk of brass in the v block. I can think of a few situations where this would be handy, when the v block hold down is too tall to clear the tool. Sometimes I wish all my work holding devices had tapped holes all over the place. Including the machined table. Half of almost every job is setup, and anything that will reduce that time, or make something more rigid is ok by me.

[gnm109]

Make new jaws with the tapped holes you want.

ME

Yep. I don't drill holes in prime equipment. Not that anyone cares, but extra holes devalue equipment unless they are absolutely necessary, say for example, installing a DRO.

For he few times, you would use a clamp like that, a hole in a jaw would be the best way.