One advantage you guys with Kurts & their clones mill vises is they have rectangular jaws. They lend themselves to jaw replacement, sacrificial jaws and those clamp-on stops. I'm a big fan of stops. They help a lot with accuracy as the part can go in & out as often as you like & preserve the same position. Unfortunately my mill vise has prismatic jaws. I shouldn't complain because its super accurate. But you cant use the typical rectangular clamp on stop due to the taper on the back face & also there is very little lip. I have a stop that comes in from the side but it takes a little longer to set up. When you have little parts around the middle of the jaw, these kind of stops are easier.
So I came up with this arrangement. Its basically a steel bar with a bolt on front lip stop. It saved me milling away a bunch of material from solid & gives me flexibility to attach different thicknesses or custom shapes if I choose. I had to relieve a notch in the top bar so it would clear the jaw protrusion. The rest lies flat on the top of the vise block. My vise also has big cap screw heads protruding proud on the block but I decided to not relieve for those or there would be little left of the bar to lay flat on. So my range is limited between them, but that's going to be fine.
The overly complicated part comes with the clamping mechanism. Its funny how you take a POS hardware store clamp for granted. I wanted a shoe that would clamp tight & accurate & in line as much as possible with the stop area. That means the foot has to be able to free rotate about the threaded screw. If its fixed to the screw the whole assembly skates sideways as the shoe makes contacts & torques against the surface. There is a reason why clamp feet are designed this way. Many commercial clamp shoes have a ball in socket which nice but easy to replicate. Some are just a cup with a peened over end. So I machined what looks like a big thumbscrew with 1/4-28 TPI threads & tapped the end of the screw 4-40. A flathead 4-40 screw gets loctited in there so it always resides behind the face of the shoe via the countersink but just enough clearance so the shoe can rotate. It works!
So I came up with this arrangement. Its basically a steel bar with a bolt on front lip stop. It saved me milling away a bunch of material from solid & gives me flexibility to attach different thicknesses or custom shapes if I choose. I had to relieve a notch in the top bar so it would clear the jaw protrusion. The rest lies flat on the top of the vise block. My vise also has big cap screw heads protruding proud on the block but I decided to not relieve for those or there would be little left of the bar to lay flat on. So my range is limited between them, but that's going to be fine.
The overly complicated part comes with the clamping mechanism. Its funny how you take a POS hardware store clamp for granted. I wanted a shoe that would clamp tight & accurate & in line as much as possible with the stop area. That means the foot has to be able to free rotate about the threaded screw. If its fixed to the screw the whole assembly skates sideways as the shoe makes contacts & torques against the surface. There is a reason why clamp feet are designed this way. Many commercial clamp shoes have a ball in socket which nice but easy to replicate. Some are just a cup with a peened over end. So I machined what looks like a big thumbscrew with 1/4-28 TPI threads & tapped the end of the screw 4-40. A flathead 4-40 screw gets loctited in there so it always resides behind the face of the shoe via the countersink but just enough clearance so the shoe can rotate. It works!
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