I designed a bit of tooling for those of you who want to splash a little $$ on your machine’s efficiency - here’s a 90 degree indexer/tombstone that fits under the gantry. This is an awesome workflow, and for many smaller parts you can totally avoid re-fixturing and probing:
Total cost is about $1000, not including the aluminum to make the tombstone. These are the parts (a bit cheaper if you buy direct from XinDian’s website like I did).
Please note - if you make and use this without also modeling your spindle nose and spindle housing into the machine simulation, you are very likely to crash your machine!!
Looks like there’s no need to separately buy the pull studs. The vise comes with a set of four.
Wish I had known!
The vise itself seems acceptable. The centering screw has a slight bind in some parts of the travel, but not enough to hinder function. I might take it apart and see if anything needs to be deburred. Otherwise it looks like a solid chunk of iron.
My chuck plate still hasn’t arrived, so I can’t say how concentric it is.
Thanks, this is pretty interesting and I look forward to seeing how it works for you.
How did you pick this series from them vs the cheaper but similar looking Erowa series. Erowa is for EDM and might not be as rigid, I’m not sure what market the D52 ones were made for originally.
I have a Sherline 4th axis (from a prior CNC machine) to get working on my system and could probably make it fit one of these vises. I’d have to think about how to do homing to it to be accurately at 0, 90, 180, and 270 marks for working in rectangular stock.
Do the holes in the face of the jaw go all the way through? Could you use them to secure soft jaws?
I don’t see why the Erowa style clamping wouldn’t be plenty rigid, but I also haven’t used it. I like how the Lang style studs can be installed directly onto stock - in some cases you don’t even need a vise. They also don’t require all 4 pull studs to be used. You can use three or even two, provided the part is braced against the chuck and the “filler” studs are installed.
The EDM style vise may work, I don’t know. Obviously EDM equipment doesn’t need rigidity, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they cheap out on materials. Just speculation. I like how the H77 vise can be used like a traditional vise, or by gripping stock with the serrated edge.
I want to figure out some way to mechanically press matching serrations into stock for extra grip. Lang Technik sells a pneumatic vise serration press, but that’s way too expensive. I was thinking of trying to retrofit a HF pneumatic press with some custom dies that would at least handle aluminum.
