I was curious what the more experienced users of this forum chose for their mill in terms of workholding? This will be my first cnc mill and will be learning from the ground up. I did pick up the crossfire pro about a year ago and really enjoy it. I ordered the MR-1 on opening day along with two of the SMW 1/2" Mod Vise Systems. I was just curious what are the drawback or benefits of the two options from the more experienced user base here. Please let me know what your thoughts are on this and if it is a mistake to pick one or the other as a newbie. Thank you for your help and guidance.
Jeff, thanks for asking that, I am in exactly the same boat! I looked over the specs, here is a summary from what I read, hopefully someone will chime in to confirm and if there are other differences.
Langmuir Vice
Opening up to 10"
Base thickness 1.18"
Unknown height of jaws
Just spin the threaded pin to close/open jaws
Used Langmuir specific holdowns to hold base to machine?
SMW Vice
Opening up to 14"
Base thickness 1"
Soft and hard jaws
1/2 high jaws
Jaws moved on the pallet requires undoing and doing fasteners
Perhaps what should have happened is the holding plate on the MR-! should have been designed to hold the SMW jaws directly, so you do not need a pallet.
The SMW vices appear to be more standard since they are used by other companies, while the Langmuir system is strictly bespoke.
I went with the vice for ease of opening and closing on various parts. Just seems like a quicker system.
If I get into anything that is a more production type work, doing the same part multiple times. I could see the SMW vices being great.
Mostly I expect to be making one off shit for my race car so I went with the vice. (and as other have said, maybe Ill try my hand and my own low pro vice)
I bought one vise for quick setups but two of the smw vises with dual stations for multiple part runs. It’ll suit me better for production runs on parts that I make.
Obviously a short workholding setup is going to be important on a machine with limited Z travel.
However, I think the problem with using the mod vise directly on the table is that there is no way to square it. From the assembly video posted on youtube the table is just roughly square to the chip tray with a tape measure. I am definitely going to be thinking a lot more about this before pouring concrete, and probably putting in blank aluminum plates, if not other features that allow future flexibility.
Thank you for the great information. I had not thought about the ease of the low profile vise. I had thought about making one of the SMW vise systems but figured I would wait for someone with far more experience than I to release a model and some general explanation of how to do it. I can see how having both systems would be of benefit and may just have to get at least 1 low profile vice ordered just in case.