Fixture for holding parts at an angle in the milling vise.

[BCRider]

Fresh from my success with making a fixture for holding down parts to a plate in my bandsaw I realized that I could use the same idea for holding parts in my milling vise at an angle. This is overkill if only one part is needed but if we're doing a few it's something to keep in mind.

The bar I used is just a scrap of 1/4 aluminium. It could be done as a "T" shape to fit between the vise bed rails but it wasn't wide enough so I fitted two pins of 1/8 welding wire and filed flats on the outer edges of the pins until it was a light push fit to seat the jig between the rails. Holes will be drilled as needed and when I get too many holes in it I'll make a new one. This first go took about 20 minutes to make. So not a huge amount of time.

The pins are 3/32 welding rod. This is actually .095'ish so a nice push fit into the slight oversize holes made by a typical 3/32 drill bit.

Hope some of you find it helpful..... The pictures pretty well tell the whole story. I'll certainly find it useful for future projects. I just wish I'd thought of something this simple for setting up angles a long time ago....



And here's the hold downs all done and in place with the vise in the longitudinal setup which was the reason for doing these in the first place.

[old mart]

I am constantly amazed to see yet another clever way of getting the job done, I just hope I will remember it if the need arrises.

[Doozer]

I am thinking just a plain old vee block would work for this.

-D

[DR]

Jaws for 6" Kurt vises are available with a precision pattern of holes for pins to mount parts at various angles. I recall they weren't sold by Kurt, but one of the many companies that make special jaws for Kurt vises.

[Dan Dubeau]

Great problem solving, and nice hold downs. Well done!

[BCRider]

I am thinking just a plain old vee block would work for this.

-D

Perhaps in your world filled with 6" vises and their deep jaws. My machines pretty well limit me to the more dainty 4" options. Even so, being a lazy sort I did in fact open the drawer and look at the V blocks very briefly. But let's check out my options.....

Pretty sure this one will be problematic....




And this other option only gives me a sketchy 1/2 x 1/2 V to hold a part which would have sat above the jaws by around 3/4 inch.



For the light cuts with the finishing shear tool this would have been acceptable other than for this additional minor issue......



.... Aaaannnnd that would be why I used the flat hold down example from the bandsaw's "mini pallet" (more click bait ) as inspiration for option C.....

[Doozer]

Make up some small vee blocks.
Out of aluminum even.
Don't need hard and ground vee blocks.
I have a bunch I have made.
Handy as a shirt pocket.

-D

[BCRider]

Or just use pins in that plate to simulate the angle block. And have the flexibility to add pins to permit a wide variety of angles or the holding of odd shapes. There's more than one road to Rome after all.

To be fair as I was making the pin plate the following did occur to me. Many are the times that a set of V plates like this would have been handy for holding a wide variety of pieces at angles like this. But these would have taken a lot longer to make than the pin plate. And the advantage to the pin plate is that it can hold odd things at odd angles at any position. And with changes to the pin length just about any thickness.

One day though I'll make the set shown in the sketch below for my 4" size vises. And yes, they will be as handy as a shirt pocket... The deeper one with the small corners will likely be 1/4 or maybe even 3/8 since those corners are weak and it's the sort of size I'd only use with bigger parts anyway. So the extra thickness would not be a problem.

I wouldn't want to do actual blocks though since I've already found that too often with the smaller parts I make that the existing V blocks are way too long.... although I guess I could do these in pairs ....

[boslab]

Sort of sine bar arrangement, I like it
mark

[BCRider]

Sort of sine bar arrangement, I like it
mark

Joe Pie did a precision form of this pin jig. Your sine bar reference reminded me of that. But in this case it only needed to look right as a 45 chamfer. No actual function other than to possibly avoid barking my knuckles on the corners . So the only standard I went by was the 45 side of the cheap combination square used to hold the blocks at the angle then to touch some drill points with my 3/32 transfer punch. That was depened with a bigger punch and then drilled. So no four degrees of angular accuracy for this particular use.

For some other application? Then I'd be doing something similar to what Joe Pie did with his precision pin setup.

FOUND IT ! Here's Joe's precision pin jig. Well worth the watching.

(27) A 3 Pin Fixture That Does All The Work -- You'll Enjoy This One !! - YouTube

As for the pins in plate idea this isn't anything new to me. But where I've used it more is for holding parts on the cross cut slide on my table saw. And the pins in those cases were finishing nails into the 3/8 mdf of the sled. To be honest that's where I got the idea for the roughing in the bandsaw and why I made the sort of mini pallet (MORE click bait ) for the metal bandsaw. And the idea just slid across to the version for the milling vise seen here.

I'll make up the angle plates in pairs so I can use them as "V" parallels at some point down the road. But for now there's other projects.

[oxford]

I don’t know who it was but someone on here drilled and tapped the mounting bolts for fixed jaws. Then there was an aluminum plate with the angle cut into it that could be bolted on. It was a pretty slick idea. Let me see if I save a pic of it.

[oxford]

Here it is. Wouldn’t be hard to make a few of these up.

[Tundra Twin Track]

Nice job on the Jig BC,out of curiosity what size are the Grade 8 bolts holding Vise on Shaper?

[Dan Dubeau]

Not to take away from your idea BC, but showing another way to skin the cat I've come up with, similar to yours. I've made a few like this one over the years for small "production runs" of parts that need held at various angles. Super quick to make out of whatever scrap is hanging around, and with the step in the back it registers against the fixed jaw so you have very repeatable setups. I cut the angle either using a sine bar, or my angle setups blocks, depends what it needs to be. Its easy to pickup the angled corner with a pin and some trig.

[BCRider]

Oxford, those bolt ons are a lot like the sketch for the V plates. But fixed obviously. Still, it shows that I'm thinking in the right direction. Thanks for dredging up those pics. Oh, and the one which looks like it might be a good 90 for squaring the stock in the first pic brings up another idea for me. I gotta think on it a bit more first though. But it would be a sort of square to use for setting items up with that side between the jaws sitting square to the mill table. Just not sure how best to do it at the moment so it can be used with all manner of items.

Tundra, the bolts are 3/8-16. The shaper is a lightweight as shapers go. 1/2" won't even fit in the slots which are only 0.46 inch wide. My mill table takes 1/2 but my old mill drill from years back was also only good for 3/8. So early on I went with 3/8 and stayed with it over the years for all my home hobby clamping needs. The Grade 8's came from the local fab shop that also sells hardware like this by the pound on the side. It was Covid times so I wasn't allowed to browse the shelves and self load the bag like normal. The counter guy that grabbed my order messed up. I got Grade 8 for Grade 5 pricing since he wasn't going to go and sort out all the mixed sizes..... SCORE ! ! ! ! Seemed like a worthy place to use a few of them.

Dan, those are nice blocks. I would not be at all reluctant to do something similar if the need arises. But it might not be to your accuracy level until I actually buy or make a sine bar and invest in a set of gauge blocks. In the meantime if I need anything of that sort I'd have to rely on a printout from the CAD program with proofing "rulers" on the print and fudge the X and Y scaling factors by tenths of a % to get a true enough print to use as a template for making such a block. The positioning bar on the back of that 20° block is an especially nice touch. Your angled blocks though are a bit more specialized. Nicer? Oh heck yeah! ! ! ! But the beauty of the pin plate is that new pins can be added as needed for quite a few uses until there's so many holes that they start to run into each other or we simply lose track of which hole we just drilled. I figure that the plate from the first post is good for at least a dozen further projects of need before I need to even worry about having too many holes. Your lovely looking 20° plate is only really good for something needing a 20° angle. So I'd say that both options have their place.

......Now if you'll excuse me all these ideas are making me think that I need to go gauge block and sine plate shopping....