orange aint gonna just up and leave one day. Maybe in a few years? Maybe not, maybe they will keep making vises even if Eric decides to move onto a new project.
Either way unless you bandsaw cut your vise in half, the thing is made of cast iron (durabar) and will last 50 years if you take care of it. It is also highly modular so you can replace individual components very easily.
Anytime anyone posts a vise thread I alwasy jump in to support Orange. Not because I am a fanboy but because the vises are REALLY well made, REALLY versatile, and REALLY nice. I mean, the deluxe single station 26" long version is $2400...that ain't cheap! Price in this case reflects performance. I assume youd get a big one?
Like I tell everyone, I love the vise mainly for the versatility. We are a high mix low volume shop with all kinds of setups. Now I can do 90% of my setups without removing the vises from the bed. The hot swapping of the dovetail vise jaws for first op work means all I generally do is position the mitee-bite clamps where I need them, then pop the hard jaws in for op2. Or maybe ill throw some quick change dovetail softjaws in there for a custom setup.
I have a custom fixture plate I need to design, so I am using the vise pallets that come with the dovetails and locating pin holes already machined into them. Design fixture with mitee bites, pull off jaw carriers, load vise pallet onto vise, and machine. Work envelope of 8"x17.5" with potential for high density part fixturing.
I really rarely take the vises off (cleaning excepted). In today's case, I needed to run a 13" tall part to do some deep hole drilling and one vise did come off so I could put a big angle plate on the table. We use our vacuum pallets directly on the vises which saves hours of time. Now you did say that you only want it as signle station, but the good thing about the deluxe vise is that if you decide in the future you need double station, you can buy a fixed middle jaw and convert it in seconds.
Honestly i don't know of any 6" machine vise on the market that can do what Orange can do. I know there are nicer vises (Schunk, Chick, etc), I know there are cheaper vises (Glacern, Shars), I know there are bigger vises (Kurt 8"), but not a single one of them can run fixture plates as well as jaws with a <5min changeover time. It is the most versatile machine vise out there. People can complain about chips management with the Orange...ive found them to be pretty good overall, but great when you consider that you can strip the vise down to nothing but the casting and clean it perfectly. Cleaning a Kurt vise is a massive PITA, i don't care who you are. Also, no thrust bearings to worry - its all sealed.
We spent around $5-6K on 2 vises from them will all accessories, pallets, replacement parts, etc. Money well spent.
, we could end up with even more Oranges! Thanks for the words guys.