Mill soft jaws thickness

Hi everyone

I have a need to make a bunch of soft jaws for a specific task coming up. I think the machining forces are going to be quite low - I'll be exclusively using cutters 1/8" and under, and machining materials will be plastic and wood.

I'll also have a surplus of 1/2" thick acrylic, and I was thinking it would be perfect for the soft jaw material. Is there any reason to think it wouldn't work? I'll obviously need to be careful when I clamp down the vise (no cheater bars here!), but I shouldn't need to clamp down hard with a soft jaw anyway.

The only downside I see is not having enough material to counterbore the bolt holes in the jaw - but for this task, I don't think it matters - the bolts can be proud of the jaw.

Let me know if I'm missing any potential problems, thanks

Lee

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Coolant? Make sure the plastic won't stress-crack from the coolant in combination with retainer screw forces and workpiece clamping forces. May not matter if it cracks if your forces are only from ≤1/8" cutters, but do think about it.

You would want your soft jaws to be made of harder material than what you plan to hold in them. In the event of chips getting trapped in between them and your part, the chips will tend to stick into the part rather than the jaws. If the chips stick in the jaws, you risk damaging all the parts you put in after. If they stick to the part, they typically just damage the one part

Good suggestions, thanks. But each set of soft jaws will be used for a single part. If there's space, they may see a second part in a different pocket, but they won't be used for production runs of parts

Lee

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With a little common sense I can't see any problems.

FWIW the last set of 1 job only special soft milling vise jaws I made were from a pieces of 2x4 framing lumber.