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Workholding stop for Kurt milling vise.

John Conroy

John Conroy

member
Premium Member
A few years ago i made a work stop for my Magnum milling vise. I was pretty disappointed with the vise so I bought a new DX6 Kurt vise for Christmas 2016. The vise is a few light years better than the Magnum! You DO get what you pay for. Any way the work stop attachment I made for the Magnum doesn't fit the Kurt. I used a couple of small blocks of tool steel I had in my scrap bin and made up a couple of small brackets to work with the arm of the original work stop I made. I drilled 3/16" holes in the set screws and added brass pads to prevent marring the round shaft. Hard to improve the Kurt vise but this will help a little.









 
That is the same vice we have on our mill but we haven't bought any pins for it but we do need to make a stop for it.
 
I didn't buy the Kurt sine keys as they were crazy expensive. I made these from 5/8 drill rod. I machined a groove for an o-ring to keep the keys from falling out and the hole drilled through is so compressed air can be used to release a stuck one and so they can be installed and the trapped air can escape.





 
Dead square every time within .001" in 6 inches. A little tap with a dead blow hammer will make it perfect if you really being fussy.
 
John Conroy said:
Dead square every time within .001" in 6 inches. A little tap with a dead blow hammer will make it perfect if you really being fussy.
Click to expand...
Sounds good my Son has pulled it off twice now this time along with the 4 th axis we haven't tried yet. We are still getting use to the mill but that tool setter and probe is the cats ass!
 
Looks good John. I've never seen the underside of a Kurt. Are the other holes in proximity essentially the same thing - you can relocate your dowel pins to those holes & now re-position vise a little closer/further?

My old vise had a key which I figured should be great because its contact area to the T-slot is longer. Problem is, any bit of grit or dirt anywhere along the longer contact is enough to bring it slightly out of alignment, so maybe works against you. I think your pins are better that way. Or if do they wear, rotate them 10 degrees & go another 5 years! LOL

I think my RF-45 slot sides are just milled rougher than other mill tables I see, so I haven't had as much luck trusting them. I've blued & lightly stoned them & I can see the rotational end mill cut mark highlights, so any kind of key is basically running on top of those hills. Fortunately my vise has ground sides so I use a machinist square between the side & front of mill table front. It gets me within a thou or so as long as I tighten the clamps that way & then tap-tap with DTI on the jaw thereafter if required.

I've heard a key also helps stabilize the vise during heavy or interrupted milling but I don't quite get this, it still has rotation axis freedom on one side even if one end of key or one dowel is still in contact because the T-slot is wider than the key or pins.
 
John Conroy said:
A few years ago i made a work stop for my Magnum milling vise. I was pretty disappointed with the vise so I bought a new DX6 Kurt vise for Christmas 2016. The vise is a few light years better than the Magnum! You DO get what you pay for. Any way the work stop attachment I made for the Magnum doesn't fit the Kurt. I used a couple of small blocks of tool steel I had in my scrap bin and made up a couple of small brackets to work with the arm of the original work stop I made. I drilled 3/16" holes in the set screws and added brass pads to prevent marring the round shaft. Hard to improve the Kurt vise but this will help a little.









Click to expand...
Does the stop flex? Or perhaps why does it not flex? How do you use it practice?
 
Its used to position multiple parts exactly the same in the vise when you are making the same part over and over again. Or to be able to remove a part from the vise and put back in exactly the same. It doesn't have to be strong, you just slide the part until it touches the stop rod.
 
John Conroy said:
Its used to position multiple parts exactly the same in the vise when you are making the same part over and over again. Or to be able to remove a part from the vise and put back in exactly the same. It doesn't have to be strong, you just slide the part until it touches the stop rod.
Click to expand...

I made this kind a while back. https://canadianhobbymetalworkers.com/threads/milling-vise-stop.761/

Having one on the vise ready seems handy. Still I wonder how repeatable placing a part is with the wrap around the vise type. Did you ever use a dial indicator to see?
 
Ive used it many times with good success but never measured. It is pretty rigid since the 2 main rods are 1/2" CRS
 
Peter, the stabalisation only occurs when you grind your keys toi exactly fit the T slots. Bert ground his and neverr uses a swivel base. His vise aligns withing one tenth every time, without aligning it - however he has to push it down onto the T slots because it is an exact fit. If you are worried about wear, same vise/same milling machine, heavily used, 35 years.

On the dirt/swearf front. before mounting your vise, the conditions should be surgically clean. mounting a vise on a dirty table/dirty T slots is just misuse of the machine.
 
Interesting, you're saying the key is a tight slip fit in between the T-slot gap.

I'm pretty anal about cleanliness particularly when I mount the vise. But on my RF-45 I'm saying the vertical surfaces in T-slot (red arrow) are not quite as nice a finish as the table top (green arrow). I've seen other tables that look much nicer. Mine looks kind of end mill-ish. Not horrible, but not satin ground.

My external square / vise alignment method works quite well because the front of the table is better surface than the T-slots, (Bison) vise is ground true & its using all of I think 8x10 machinist square. I was concerned heavy milling might shift the vise with no key but when I run a dial on the jaw, it looks to be staying put. Mind you I don't do much heavy hogging & I have six 1" wide mounting blocks, 3 per side of vise one every odd T-slot so decent & distributed down force.
 

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I think your using a square on your vise is a great approach! My vise doesn't have a ground surface anywhere that could be used to register.

Both Bert and I went to the trouble of milling those red arrow surfaces and making our T slots all the same width, to close tolerances. I never keyed my vice, because I liked using the swivel base, but Bert ground his keys to make a tight fit. So along with the T slot widths being all the same, and a tight key way fit, it helped make some milling operations noticeably smoother on Bert's machine.

When milling the red arrow surfaces you don't get a surface finish that feels like a ground surface, but can still hold to a tenth or 2 on a 5" key width.

[My apologies for bad typing on the above post - in a hurry, etc...]
 
I'm posting this here since it's about the same idea. I made this from junk lying around. Not as nice as John's..

1587334632753.png
 
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