My New Universal Vise

[CowboyCS]

I've been to a point in my engraving where I need to upgrade to a Microscope...with that in mind I decided I had better have a new vise to go with it so that I'm not constantly messing with finding center.

Not being in any hurry since I needed to save up to buy a Microscope anyways and not being able to afford both a vise and a scope at the same time as well as not seeing a vise on the market that had all the features I want in a vise I decided to make my own. I've made all my other vises so it wasn't like I didn't have an idea of what I wanted to improve/change. I also didn't want to infringe on anybodies patents so I was careful to incorporate ideas that were either common across the industry or my own. Over the course of the last year on my one day a week off from building guns I've been slowly tinkering with building this thing a piece at a time...

So here it is:
This is the complete vise with standard jaws on top:


Of course it needs to be able to tilt so I built the base with a bearing and a collar arrangement using a flange, threaded pipe and a pipe cap machined out to accept the ball bearing:


And of course when working under a scope it helps to be able to offset the head around the center of rotation so I built it to offset the width of the vise jaws when needed:


I've found that vise jaws can be so limiting in their holding ability so with that in mind one day I was working on my rotary table on my mill and noticed how easy it was to mount/clamp just about anything down with the clamping plate so I designed my vise to have removable jaws on a clamping plate:

This way I can fabricate just about any type of clamp or jig I need and have virtually unlimited ways to hold thing down to the vise.

Of course why stop there...by removing a few more screws I can take the vise off the base and tilt arm and have a low profile offset vise that can be used with a turntable or sine plate:


Some more views:








It's all carbon steel because that was what I had laying around my shop, I wish I could have made it out of stainless but this was built on a budget with a new microscope in mind.

It weighs 52 pounds with everything put together...it of course gets lighter as I start removing parts and pieces but even as a flat vise with out the base or jaws it still weighs 20ish pounds.

As time goes by and I know what kind of jigs and clamps I need I'll start fabricating them, probably mostly in brass to be non-marring. I figured I might start by making a simplified miniature set of bridgeport style clamps.

Any questions, comments, ideas, critiques are welcome.

Thanks for looking,

Colin

[omark]

it looks like a real winner to me. very useable and very well thought out and made.   mark   

[David Rase]

Colin,
Great job.  I like making jigs, tools and fixtures almost as much as rifles.  Some of my friends would say I like building tools more.  That is a great vise.  I really like the swivel.  At first I thought the ball bearing was a trailer ball.  Do you have any pictures of the ball and swivel disassembled.  I would love to see those parts disassembled.  I bet that base could be adapted to several vises.
David

[CowboyCS]

Thanks guys, hopefully as I use it more it turns out to be as versatile as I was thinking when I designed it.

David I didn't think to get any pictures of the base disassembled but it's really simple; it's a 3" threaded flange, a 3" x 3" threaded coupling and a 3" pipe cap. The 3" steel ball was given to me by a knife maker friend who said it was to big for his forge and hammer to work with so I think it is a 52100 bearing. I machined the Pipe cap out to accept the steel ball, and welded a ring inside the 3" threaded coupling, I put a leather ring inside so that it acts as a compression between the ball and the welded in ring, and put a leather ring in the pipe cap. This gives the cap and the ring some squish and prevent the ball from rubbing on metal. I also welded a 2" O.D.. pipe to the ball on center to give more clearance between the ball and the bottom plate of the vise, this also gave me a way to easily mount the vise to the base.

It's really a pretty simple set-up that could easily be adapted to hold many other things and allow for adjusting then to a good working angle. I spent less than $100.00 on the flange, pipe and cap from McMaster-Carr. I don't know what a 3" ball bearing would cost but it probably wouldn't be that expensive.

Colin

[RickS55]

Great set up. I am envious.

[David Rase]

Thanks guys, hopefully as I use it more it turns out to be as versatile as I was thinking when I designed it.

David  I machined the Pipe cap out to accept the steel ball, and welded a ring inside the 3" threaded coupling, I put a leather ring inside so that it acts as a compression between the ball and the welded in ring, and put a leather ring in the pipe cap. This gives the cap and the ring some squish and prevent the ball from rubbing on metal.
Colin

Colin,
Thank for the information.  Welding a ring inside the 3" coupling was the piece of information I was missing.  I could not figure out how to get compression on the ball.  I all makes sense now. 
David

[Dphariss]

Impressive.
The skill and ingenuity repeatedly demonstrated here never ceases to amaze me.
This was a great project and a great outcome.

Dan