A more appropriate title might've been "Let's clean a good portion of a vise". No indicator, bluing, testing for parallelism/mismatched heights, the list goes on. You may have gotten the cream of the cheap chinese milling vice crop, and that's a good thing. But when all is said and done, if it clamps the part, holds it, and you're happy with the results, that's really what counts.
I'm in the process of renovating many Kurt vises for a tech college. Your vise is very similar. The procedure for fastening the fixed jaw on a 4" (100mm) Kurt vise is to initially torque the bolts to 5 ft-lbs (6.8nm). Next, place a 1/8" (3mm) tall spacer between the fixed jaw and the movable jaw on the vise bed. A thin parallel works well. Tighten the vise jaws to 16ft-lbs (21.7nm). Then tighten the fixed jaw bolts to 16ft-lbs as well. Repeat the process in 16ft-lb increments until you reach 48ft-lbs and you are done. The high torque is why it was difficult to loosen the bolts on the fixed jaw. For comparison, a 6" vise gets torqued to 150ft-lbs (203nm).
Nice video mate. I have the same vice as yours by the looks of it, great value for the money but mine was all over the place, even though the grinds looked to be good. I ended up bluing mine at it had quite a few low spots on the bottom, and it never sat flat on my mill table. But if you're able to get good results i'd say keep it up. I never worried too much about the finish on the bottom of the moving jaw, as long as the jaw was true and flat.
I’m starting to find some accuracy issues with the mill and vice now I’ve had it for a week. But also found a couple of workarounds to help which will be my next video. Oh and I’m a fan of your channel. Thanks for the inspiration.
I recently got a 5" version of this from Vevor to use a second vice on the mill and, like you, took it apart when it arrived. I spent time breaking the edges to save on band aids later and stoned the mating surfaces. I didn't like the small bearing surface machined on the end of the the lead screw so I decided to add thrust bearings on either side of the front casting the lead screw goes through. I will also replaced the lock collar arrangement with a brass split collar to replace it when the 8mm x 1 arrives from Mau's empire of dirt. I do like the reversible jaw positioning and will make some aluminum soft jaws to increase work holding possibilities.
Yup, cleaning the oil from the vise removes the problem of it coming out of the jaws. I liked the tear down of the vise and now I won't be afraid of tearing down mine 🙂
On my version of the vise, the collar at the back is threaded and you can unwind it to remove the collar. I'm guessing it can be used to adjust the slop. But you did solve one problem that had me a bit stumped (thus my watching your clip) ... how to remove the top/sliding jaw with a bloody grub screw in the middle hole! Thus I thank you! 🍻😃👍
I also realised that the same grub screw altered the pressure on the ball locking mechanism and I could now alter the vertical movement of the moving jaw when clamping. I also cleaned up (stoning) a few of the surfaces that had bad marks, reassembled, greased and knocked the jaws into position. Nice! 👍 Ultimately, I re-machined my jig base block! WOW it fixed error on the plate attached to the block (a jig surface) from 0.40 mm error to .04 mm error! You supplied1 x small clue that allowed me to advance my project bigly! Thanks from Australia.
You did nothing to correct your issue. 1. The main cause of issues come at the mating surfaces- the angle on the carriage, the half ball it contacts, and then the pocket inside the moveable jaw. Go look at Kurt vise. You'll see very quickly that those surfaces are machined and possibly ground or polished on more expensive vise while these import vise simply cast them. All three surfaces are just cast and then they are what they are. Spend some time with a file, pencil grinder, soft abrasive wheel, and some polishing compound to get these surfaces as smooth as possible. Clean out the old grease and put new stuff in. Whole new vise. 2. Get out a pencil grinder and soft abrasive wheel and hit everything. Twice. Clearly part of their cost savings is no manual deburring. Unfortunately those burrs can often fall off and end up where they shouldn't. Every edge on that vise is razor sharp out of the box. EDIT- These vise certainly offer value to the hobby machinist.. heck, extremely good value. But be ready to put in the time to make them useable.. you'll make better parts because of it. I probably put 2-3 hours into mine when it was brand new so it takes time..
You are thinking of scraped and flaked surfaces retaining oil. Flaking leaves pockets a few thou deep. That surface is indicative of fly cutters or face mills. You can actually tell the head was better trammed on one of the parts because of the X pattern (curves going both ways). Out of tram, a face mill can create a slight hollow in the surface. Also, the fixed jaw and bottom are the only reference surfaces on the vice. If they (and your mill ways) are flat and orthogonal, your squaring issues are more likely due to technique/process than to any problem with the movable jaw.
Hi. Thanks for the comment. Yes. Scraped and flaked were the terms I’m looking for. I’ve had the mill for about 4 months. Now it’s all settled I find it more than accurate enough for my needs. Only a few 100th of a mm on any given day. And yes it’s more likely my laziness in setup will be the cause. I’m really pleased with it. After all the scare stories I read with the cheap import mills this one seems to be pretty good.
@@leeceeworkshop I didn’t mean to imply laziness! :-) Squaring all six sides of a block can be done many ways, but the important thing is to ensure you only depend on the orthogonality of the machine ways and the two reference planes of the trammed vice (indicate both relative to the spindle axis to verify tram). Tom Lipton shows a good method in one of his videos, but I like this one: ua-cam.com/video/ZghLslZZ6sg/v-deo.html
Next time you remove your jaws clean them good and try putting valve grinding compound on yhem a rub them together then clean and see we're the shiny spots are it should be mostly shiny if not the two pieces are not ground flat to each other
I hate to say it but it’s poor finishing. These vices are a bit of a project but that’s okay. The way the milled grooves are, they tend to wipe the way oil out like a squeegee. I spent a not insignificant time deberring my vice so this is very normal. Someday I would like to pick up a second vice, scrape in the bottoms and have them ground to a matched set.
I like the squeegee analogy. That’s spot on. Now I’ve used the vice for a while, as long as I follow an identical routine for set up of each piece of work I’ve found it to be consistently inaccurate by a very small margin. And I mean that in a good way. I can just work around small errors and as a hobbyist I don’t need total accuracy. For the price I still think these vices are pretty good. At least my one isn’t too bad.
Hi. Thanks for the comment. Yes I know what you mean. Part of it is just learning how it works. The other part is it’s a lot smoother than it was. Maybe all it needed was a good clean.
A more appropriate title might've been "Let's clean a good portion of a vise". No indicator, bluing, testing for parallelism/mismatched heights, the list goes on. You may have gotten the cream of the cheap chinese milling vice crop, and that's a good thing. But when all is said and done, if it clamps the part, holds it, and you're happy with the results, that's really what counts.
I'm in the process of renovating many Kurt vises for a tech college. Your vise is very similar. The procedure for fastening the fixed jaw on a 4" (100mm) Kurt vise is to initially torque the bolts to 5 ft-lbs (6.8nm). Next, place a 1/8" (3mm) tall spacer between the fixed jaw and the movable jaw on the vise bed. A thin parallel works well. Tighten the vise jaws to 16ft-lbs (21.7nm). Then tighten the fixed jaw bolts to 16ft-lbs as well. Repeat the process in 16ft-lb increments until you reach 48ft-lbs and you are done. The high torque is why it was difficult to loosen the bolts on the fixed jaw. For comparison, a 6" vise gets torqued to 150ft-lbs (203nm).
Nice video mate. I have the same vice as yours by the looks of it, great value for the money but mine was all over the place, even though the grinds looked to be good. I ended up bluing mine at it had quite a few low spots on the bottom, and it never sat flat on my mill table. But if you're able to get good results i'd say keep it up. I never worried too much about the finish on the bottom of the moving jaw, as long as the jaw was true and flat.
I’m starting to find some accuracy issues with the mill and vice now I’ve had it for a week. But also found a couple of workarounds to help which will be my next video.
Oh and I’m a fan of your channel. Thanks for the inspiration.
I recently got a 5" version of this from Vevor to use a second vice on the mill and, like you, took it apart when it arrived. I spent time breaking the edges to save on band aids later and stoned the mating surfaces. I didn't like the small bearing surface machined on the end of the the lead screw so I decided to add thrust bearings on either side of the front casting the lead screw goes through. I will also replaced the lock collar arrangement with a brass split collar to replace it when the 8mm x 1 arrives from Mau's empire of dirt. I do like the reversible jaw positioning and will make some aluminum soft jaws to increase work holding possibilities.
Yeah I really should file the corners. I’ve cut myself on it several times! Thrust bearing sounds good. I might do that too. Cheers.
@@leeceeworkshop FYI The "collar" seems to be the retaining nut for the hidden thrust bearing that is under the oil nipple.
Yup, cleaning the oil from the vise removes the problem of it coming out of the jaws. I liked the tear down of the vise and now I won't be afraid of tearing down mine 🙂
On my version of the vise, the collar at the back is threaded and you can unwind it to remove the collar.
I'm guessing it can be used to adjust the slop.
But you did solve one problem that had me a bit stumped (thus my watching your clip) ...
how to remove the top/sliding jaw with a bloody grub screw in the middle hole!
Thus I thank you!
🍻😃👍
I also realised that the same grub screw altered the pressure on the ball locking mechanism and I could now alter the vertical movement of the moving jaw when clamping.
I also cleaned up (stoning) a few of the surfaces that had bad marks, reassembled, greased and knocked the jaws into position. Nice! 👍
Ultimately, I re-machined my jig base block!
WOW it fixed error on the plate attached to the block (a jig surface) from 0.40 mm error to .04 mm error!
You supplied1 x small clue that allowed me to advance my project bigly!
Thanks from Australia.
You did nothing to correct your issue.
1. The main cause of issues come at the mating surfaces- the angle on the carriage, the half ball it contacts, and then the pocket inside the moveable jaw. Go look at Kurt vise. You'll see very quickly that those surfaces are machined and possibly ground or polished on more expensive vise while these import vise simply cast them. All three surfaces are just cast and then they are what they are. Spend some time with a file, pencil grinder, soft abrasive wheel, and some polishing compound to get these surfaces as smooth as possible. Clean out the old grease and put new stuff in. Whole new vise.
2. Get out a pencil grinder and soft abrasive wheel and hit everything. Twice. Clearly part of their cost savings is no manual deburring. Unfortunately those burrs can often fall off and end up where they shouldn't. Every edge on that vise is razor sharp out of the box.
EDIT- These vise certainly offer value to the hobby machinist.. heck, extremely good value. But be ready to put in the time to make them useable.. you'll make better parts because of it. I probably put 2-3 hours into mine when it was brand new so it takes time..
You are thinking of scraped and flaked surfaces retaining oil. Flaking leaves pockets a few thou deep. That surface is indicative of fly cutters or face mills. You can actually tell the head was better trammed on one of the parts because of the X pattern (curves going both ways). Out of tram, a face mill can create a slight hollow in the surface.
Also, the fixed jaw and bottom are the only reference surfaces on the vice. If they (and your mill ways) are flat and orthogonal, your squaring issues are more likely due to technique/process than to any problem with the movable jaw.
Hi. Thanks for the comment. Yes. Scraped and flaked were the terms I’m looking for.
I’ve had the mill for about 4 months. Now it’s all settled I find it more than accurate enough for my needs. Only a few 100th of a mm on any given day. And yes it’s more likely my laziness in setup will be the cause. I’m really pleased with it. After all the scare stories I read with the cheap import mills this one seems to be pretty good.
@@leeceeworkshop I didn’t mean to imply laziness! :-) Squaring all six sides of a block can be done many ways, but the important thing is to ensure you only depend on the orthogonality of the machine ways and the two reference planes of the trammed vice (indicate both relative to the spindle axis to verify tram). Tom Lipton shows a good method in one of his videos, but I like this one: ua-cam.com/video/ZghLslZZ6sg/v-deo.html
@@ikkentonda ah yes. I’ve watched that video a few times. He’s great!
@@leeceeworkshop For completeness, this is how I used to do it: ua-cam.com/video/-lgMcDOkeg8/v-deo.html - the trick for the ends is pretty neat.
Next time you remove your jaws clean them good and try putting valve grinding compound on yhem a rub them together then clean and see we're the shiny spots are it should be mostly shiny if not the two pieces are not ground flat to each other
I hate to say it but it’s poor finishing. These vices are a bit of a project but that’s okay. The way the milled grooves are, they tend to wipe the way oil out like a squeegee. I spent a not insignificant time deberring my vice so this is very normal. Someday I would like to pick up a second vice, scrape in the bottoms and have them ground to a matched set.
I like the squeegee analogy. That’s spot on. Now I’ve used the vice for a while, as long as I follow an identical routine for set up of each piece of work I’ve found it to be consistently inaccurate by a very small margin. And I mean that in a good way. I can just work around small errors and as a hobbyist I don’t need total accuracy. For the price I still think these vices are pretty good. At least my one isn’t too bad.
I’m not convinced that you did anything except taking it apart and putting it back together.
Hi. Thanks for the comment. Yes I know what you mean. Part of it is just learning how it works. The other part is it’s a lot smoother than it was. Maybe all it needed was a good clean.