Shop Made Tools

[gary hart]

Nice rig Gary, what is it's capacity, 30tons?

It's about 30 ton if the junk yard gauge is correct.

[DaHui]

This is one of my first multi part machining projects...and also one of my first anodizing projects. I believe it's based on Steve Bedair's design. I used the base plate of a 4" vise as the base. Works great!

[DaHui]

Soft Jaws

I made this set of soft jaws with a bunch of dowel pin holes and set it up so I could use the same set of jaws to hold two parts in tandem and machine all six faces. Took some head scratching but worked out great.

[BobWarfield]

Gary Hart, you are a madman!

Love the "well tooled press" and love the integrated tooling storage. Village Press should ask you to write one of their Shop Wisdom books. You clearly have enough material for one.

DaHui, ditto on the cool vise jaws. I've been thinking about a slide out jaw setup myself. I saw one somewhere that uses slightly modified bolts to make it work better, so I'm wondering if you're just using ordinary socket head cap screws? Seemed like they had turned the bolts and also shortened the head. Can't remember now where I saw it and I didn't save the link (DOH!).

Endless magic is possible with special vise jaws. This is particularly common for CNC'ers. I visited a shop one time that had two big cabinets full of nothing but custom made softjaws for Kurt vises. Have seen others that keep bins for repeat jobs and they put the jaws in there.

For CNC, repeatability of the jaws is important. I've seen a lot of jaws with a bore on top you dial in for repeatability. But, I've wondered why they don't modify their jaws to use dowel pins to locate the jaws. I did see in Lipton's book he puts a shoulder to locate the jaw, which also seems a good feature.

Anyway, I digress. Great additional posts, guys!

Cheers,

BW

[Toolguy]

A lot of vise jaws are held on by low head socket cap screws. They are a standard catalog item. I use them all the time. A box of 25 will last a lifetime.
For a 6" Kurt vise I use the 1/2-13 x 3/4 size. They take a 1/4" Allen wrench.

[DaHui]

These jaws use the standard SHCS. It's a lot easier to just crack the screws loose and slide the jaws off if you change jaws very often. It also means you don't have to crank the jaws wide open to get at the heads, you can just use the short shank on a regular allen wrench.

I should also note, only the fixed jaw has pins in it. The stock is 1" wide and I think the pins protrude about 3/4" if I remember correctly.

[jimsehr]

jaws

This is the way I made my jaws for fast unloading.

Jim

[Your Old Dog]

I am in the finishing stages of my belt grinder, read all about it here !

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/sho...d=1#post527856

I am about half way done with a taper setup for my sb9

[IMG][/IMG]

[67chevelle]

Here's a couple of mine..

1st are a few hold down clamps I use in the middle of my fabrication table, it has numerous 3/8-16 tapped holes in it for bolting these down to.




I built a couple of rotating carts a few years ago based upon come plans I found in one of the HSM magazines. ( I can't remember who wrote the article, otherwise I'd give credit) This one has my abrasive saw on one side and cold cut saw on the other. It's a space saver and it's easy to clean off.. you just flip it over. :-)






I build a fail amount of steel fencing, and made this for arching 1" square tubing for the tops of the gates and fence/railing panels.



continued on next post.

[67chevelle]

My son and I just put together a deburring tumbler this week, I know I could have purchased a cheap Harbor Freight concrete mixer, but I had most of the parts for this and we spent several fun evenings building this and teaching him some additional welding and machining skills.


Mark

[Jerry]

I thought it was plain with my posting of my die-holder, that it was a staged photo, as far as the hand holding the die-holder went. Besides I would never wear my favorite hoody to work in the shop! Sorry for the discomfort that I may have caused some readers.

[Glenn Wegman]

Just finished a little V-Block and Clamp from A2 tool steel.

A little machining...


A little grinding...

[Hal]

Glen
Very nice job on the V block.
And a nice way to mark your tools.
Do you just mill a slot,stamp your initials and bead blast the bottom of the slot?
And another question if you don't mind. Is the high polish the way it came off the grinder?

Thanks
Hal

[Glenn Wegman]

Hal,

Yes, it was milled and then stamped. I did bead blast it prior to grinding.

Yes, that is right off of the grinder. I'm one of those crazies that believes in balancing wheels

[deltaenterprizes]

Long sleeves around a spinning lathe chuck can have disasterous results!
SAFETY FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!