Skunk Works

Milling Machines and Vises

This photo finds me in my shop working with my vertical milling machine on a part for one of my latest projects.

If there is one tool in a machine shop that goes mostly un-noticed by visitors to the shop, it is the machine vise that plays one of the most important roles in the shop, holding material that is being transformed into things of beauty, well that's how I see it!

All kidding aside, the machine vise plays an important role in every machining job that takes place in a machine shop, and once you get past the layout work, the next thing to consider is the vise that will be chosen to do the job.
Vises come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the bench vise to the precision machining vise, and all types of vises in-between.
One of the precision machine vises that gets used regularly in my shop, is the compound angle vise seen in this photo mounted on the table of my milling machine.
This vise is especially designed to turn compound angles, and also has a swivelling base as well.
All adjustments may be made in .001" of an inch, making this vise extremely versatile for does complex machining job.
For example, when I was building the 1/4 scale Chevy small block V8 that I built some years back, and needed to do the machine work on the heads, this vise proved in-valuable for doing the compound angle machine work required to locate the intake and exhaust ports in place, with mere thousands of an inch separating the ports and the locations for the valves and spark-plugs.
Without this vise a challenging job would have been near impossible to do in my shop.
So the bottom line is that every machine shop has multiple vises to choose from, and that includes my machine shop.

Here is a look at the 1/4 scale V8 engine referenced above when the engine was still in the midst of having the machine work done to complete it......
http://www.jerryclement.ca/MachineShop/Projects-In-Metal/n-6JCfP/i-jLHpc4x

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