RedneckPhysics
Plastic
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2015
Hey All,
I'm in the process of purchasing all sorts of accessories and tooling for a new Tormach 770, and have gotten a bit stuck on selecting an initial workholding solution.
This is a university-owned machine, used for making all sorts of Electrical-Engineering related prototypes... so I'm not looking for anything production oriented (not that you'd be doing that with a 770 anyways!). We'll be machining some longer parts, so we might take the 14" x-travel to the limit on occasion. Other than that, I don't know exactly what situations we'll encounter, but it would be nice to be prepared. I'll be ordering a collet vise for round stock, and some 4-axis applications, but mostly, we'll be using round and square stock with 3-axis milling techniques. It would be nice to have a precision CNC vise or two for vertical workholding as well.
After experiencing the Tormach branded 5" vise on a friend's 1100, I wasn't terribly impressed. It took me a total of about 12 to 15 minutes to successfully seat 4 parts... and even then, I had to run 1 with loose parallels. I'm looking for a step up in quality... but maybe not something as expensive as a brand new Kurt 3400V/3600V. Also, the Tormach 770 has a pretty small table...26" x 8"... so it's not going to handle the length of most 6" vises. There's only 1" to 1.5" of rear table overhang before the vise will crash into the z-axis way cover.
Since we'll be doing long parts, and since wide vises aren't going to fit on our table along the Y-axis, I'm thinking of getting a matched set 4" vises for the majority of our work. Two would be nice for supporting ~10" pieces, but there is room for 3, to support a billet along the full travel. Would this be a good way to go? I really don't have any experience with multiple vise setups, so I'm not sure if it's overkill or not. Would there be any advantages to vise-holding vs. clamping directly to the table at that point?
Along the same lines, would it be a pain in the rear to set-up 3 vises? I've not done so before. Would it take special metrology tools? I imagine I would only be taking down and setting-up two vises for most of our parts.
As far as a potential purchase, I'm thinking of Glacern's GPV-412 4" precision vise (Link). Looks like a good middle ground between a solid design, and a good price point, when compared to Kurt. They do bed height matching on multi-vise orders, which is awesome. If I were to buy the vises separately, (say I order 2 now, and need 1 more later), what are the prospects for getting a properly matched bed height?
Here's a quick model I made, comparing the sizes of the GPV4-12 and GPV-615 on the 770's table. These are bounding boxes, not including the screw spindle or the extra bit of jaw plate on top:
I kept the spindle (white round part over the vises) in the top-down view.
I'd appreciate any advice you could give me!!
Many Thanks,
Mike
I'm in the process of purchasing all sorts of accessories and tooling for a new Tormach 770, and have gotten a bit stuck on selecting an initial workholding solution.
This is a university-owned machine, used for making all sorts of Electrical-Engineering related prototypes... so I'm not looking for anything production oriented (not that you'd be doing that with a 770 anyways!). We'll be machining some longer parts, so we might take the 14" x-travel to the limit on occasion. Other than that, I don't know exactly what situations we'll encounter, but it would be nice to be prepared. I'll be ordering a collet vise for round stock, and some 4-axis applications, but mostly, we'll be using round and square stock with 3-axis milling techniques. It would be nice to have a precision CNC vise or two for vertical workholding as well.
After experiencing the Tormach branded 5" vise on a friend's 1100, I wasn't terribly impressed. It took me a total of about 12 to 15 minutes to successfully seat 4 parts... and even then, I had to run 1 with loose parallels. I'm looking for a step up in quality... but maybe not something as expensive as a brand new Kurt 3400V/3600V. Also, the Tormach 770 has a pretty small table...26" x 8"... so it's not going to handle the length of most 6" vises. There's only 1" to 1.5" of rear table overhang before the vise will crash into the z-axis way cover.
Since we'll be doing long parts, and since wide vises aren't going to fit on our table along the Y-axis, I'm thinking of getting a matched set 4" vises for the majority of our work. Two would be nice for supporting ~10" pieces, but there is room for 3, to support a billet along the full travel. Would this be a good way to go? I really don't have any experience with multiple vise setups, so I'm not sure if it's overkill or not. Would there be any advantages to vise-holding vs. clamping directly to the table at that point?
Along the same lines, would it be a pain in the rear to set-up 3 vises? I've not done so before. Would it take special metrology tools? I imagine I would only be taking down and setting-up two vises for most of our parts.
As far as a potential purchase, I'm thinking of Glacern's GPV-412 4" precision vise (Link). Looks like a good middle ground between a solid design, and a good price point, when compared to Kurt. They do bed height matching on multi-vise orders, which is awesome. If I were to buy the vises separately, (say I order 2 now, and need 1 more later), what are the prospects for getting a properly matched bed height?
Here's a quick model I made, comparing the sizes of the GPV4-12 and GPV-615 on the 770's table. These are bounding boxes, not including the screw spindle or the extra bit of jaw plate on top:
I kept the spindle (white round part over the vises) in the top-down view.
I'd appreciate any advice you could give me!!
Many Thanks,
Mike
