Speed Vise

gdavis2265 posted to the HSM forum about his speed vise for the drill press. It looks like a very nice design:
"Here is a speed vise that I made - it can be used vertical / horizontal or flipped to the opposite side - it works really well, and was cheap to make. It pivots at the end and slides fast to locate the part under the drill - the all-thread clamps tightly locking the part in place, and you only need to hold the handle with the left hand while drilling to keep it in place. I milled some steps in the jaws to act as quick parallels. I used it on the DP for a while until I bought a 8" Heinrich vise (love that thing) and now this has been re-pourpused to bandsaw duty, as it works really well for holding / pushing / and guiding parts on the vertical bandsaw.




Speed vise being used with circle cutting jig on vertical bandsaw.


Just some layout I did to show the capacity of the vise."

---

Something he didn't specifically point out were the notches milled into the edges of the jaws, great for holding thin plates. And the drilled and tapped holes are another thoughtful addition. Great work!

Belt Grinder

gdavis2265 posted to the HSM forum about his belt grinder. It looks like a very nice design. Very configurable, but sturdy, and without a lot of extra 'fluff':
"My 2 x 72 Belt Grinder - 3HP


I designed it to be somewhat universal - Using a flat platten, having the big wheel out, little wheel out, etc...
The table is a dog-bone design built with ball bearings joined with a rod. The table can move any angle at any location, as well as moved to be used in the vertical position.
This unit has to live on my grinder bench and room is getting real tight, so I designed the unit to have a motor overhead (keeps grinding dust out of the motor) and uses a cross shaft to drive the pulley on the opposite side.

---

In response to a question about the tool rest:
No keys, just two ball bearing joined (welded) to a round rod - ie... dogbone. I believe I used 3/8" flatbar with holes drilled for the balls to engage. These need to be thick so as not to deflect; I reef-down on that capscrew fairly tight, as the hardened chrome balls can slip. I also put a fairly large chamber on each hole to help provide more surface area for grip.

---

I'll try and snap a couple detailed pics of the table. No keys, just two ball bearing joined (welded) to a round rod - ie... dogbone. I believe I used 3/8" flatbar with holes drilled for the balls to engage. These need to be thick so as not to deflect; I reef-down on that capscrew fairly tight, as the hardened chrome balls can slip. I also put a fairly large chamber on each hole to help provide more surface area for grip. But once tightened down, it really holds very well What's not evident from the design photos below is that the magenta colored piece that welds to the under side of the table actually has a ball welded into the hole and centered. Like I mentioned, I'll try to snap some detailed photos for ya a bit later. I snapped a couple screen shots of my table design - hope this helps some."

---

In response to a question about whether the driver and idler wheels are crowned, and asking about the speed:
"Both are crowned - As for speed, I think I designed it to run at the recommended speed for alum oxide belts (4200 sfpm???????) - can't remember.
I've been using it for about a year or so now and seems to work great.
I mainly use it for general purpose fab and works great - I build maybe one to two knifes a year, so having it at the proper speed is not much an issue for me."

---

"I see that I designed it for about 4800 sfpm, isn't that about the correct speed for AO? "

Finger plate

mariolucchini posted on the HMEM forum about his beautiful finger plate and storage box:

One of the most gratifying tasks we modelers can undertake, is the construction of our own tools....at least this is my personal way of seeing things....

A long caressed project from way back then, was the design & building of a finger plate....I just made the decision of making one for my use....since I used one of a friend of mine, I now wonder how I did without it....

I made a thorough search in the web, not finding much, but what little I learned I added to my personal needs....so here we go....

I started with the base, which I produced from a discarded PC aluminium heat sink, from which I hacksawed the fins and made a long and boring flycutting sesion....

Here it is, finally sanded and polished....the four sides are at exact 90º from each other so it can be used in my milling table and in the miniature table saw....





Notice that the upper face of the base has 3 milled "V" ways for holding different size round material...also there are 8 threaded holes which are mighty useful for holding the most used screws or bolts I mostly use in my models....these are from the smaller up....1.2 mm, 1.4 mm, 1.7 mm, 2 mm, 3 mm, 4 mm, 5 mm and 6 mm.

The bottom face of the base....





If you should want to use the finger plate on the vise, a screwed bar was devised which is applied via countersunk brass screws from below...





The pillar, made from BMS and threaded M6, the lower threaded portion is made in such a way that you can fix it to the base with just finger pressure....I intend to make a wooden box in a time to come to keep the whole safe & sound.... so the pillar must be removable...besides I love making special wooden boxes!!!!



The pillar in place on the base...................





The clamp, made from 4 mm thick brass.......the lower ends are slightly angled so they can rest parallel to the base when in use....







The clamping knob & the special washer.............





The special washer that goes under the clamping knob, is rounded on the undernath so that it gives good grabbing power at any angle......



The adjuster screw...........Made from an M 4 bolt, with a heavily knurled brass knob, has the added finesse of using an acrylic point so as not to marr the plate's surface when tightening it..........





Here's an image of the threaded holes being occupied with an example of each bolt of different dimensions....



The parts of the ensemble, including a special screwdriver to screw in the special base for using it in the vise....



The finger plate assembled showing some of its infinite uses.....

A brass bar in one of the "V" ways, ready to be crossdrilled....



The same brass bar in one of the corner "V" ways, ready to be filed or rectified via a grinder....



A small hinge to be filed......the clamping action of the finger plate is really powerful, when it bites.....well........





The finished box with all its inlettings.....



The box with its contents....





The closed box.............by the way, the box was made entirely in 3 mm thick plywood....





Another homemade tool for the collection............

Shop tooling organizer

Gary Paine posted on the Home Shop Machinist forum about some nice storage boxes he made:

Often I turn to woodworking to supplement my metalworking activity. Usually this turns into some form of organizer for the tooling and cutters. Such is the case with the accessories box that resides beside my Burke horizontal mill. The milling cutters are sharp and fragile, and I needed a way to quickly find the right one without handling a whole pile of them. The tills fitted in on top make it a bit less than instant to get at one of the cutters on the bottom, but they are individually and safely wrapped in protective wood on the bottom layer.



In a drawer of the custom cabinet that lives under the legs of my Delta Milwaukee Toolmaker Grinder are partitions for the fragile grinding wheels that are used on the machine.



Different diameter wheels needed different dividers, or it would have been less convenient to get out the small wheels from the large dividers.



The purpose of this post is to try to give something back to this great group by sharing the construction method for the dividers. Many times this turns out to be just two dowels, two end plates, and a bunch of leaves or dividers. I size the dividers between 60 and 80 percent of the cutter diameter in height and about ½ inch or so wider. I space the dowels so they are just clear of a tangent to the diameter, trying to be at least 1/2 in. from side and bottom of the leaf. The dowels are fitted into the end plates at least 1/8 inch from the bottom more than the dimension on the divider so they slide freely. The hole in the end plates for the dowel is not drilled through, but only about ¾ of the way. That way, the dowels act to hold the end plates up against their support. No glue is needed. The holes in the dividers are a generous clearance for the dowel. A side plate such as I show in the photo can be added if desired for full protection of the cutter or ease in handling the assembly. Tip: drill the dividers first as a clamped together stack, top leaf in the stack marked LEFT. Take that leaf and lay it in finished place on the right end plate with the LEFT mark up and transfer the holes into the end plate. Then lay it on the left end plate with the mark against the end and transfer the holes. Doing it this way cancels layout or drilling errors and assures all the holes line up sweetly and it all sits flat. The dividers can be anything from 1/8 inch thick up, and cardboard works but I fear it will absorb moisture from the air and go limp in time. Hope you like the idea.

Lathe Spindle Stop

darryl posted on the HSM forum about a spindle stop he made. I particularly liked the pin wrench for adjusting it:

A few pics of this simple project. The morse tapered stop piece with threaded adjustment bar, and the wrench to adjust it-



Inserted into the spindle taper-



With chuck in place- here it's set to give about 1/2 inch of material in the jaws behind the face of the jaws.



The diameter of the face on the adjusting bolt is just under 1/2 inch. There will be another adjusting bolt made if I need it to be a smaller diameter. The bolt is a friction fit, which I got by choosing a galvanized bolt over a chromed one. I polished up the bolt so it wouldn't chew up the threads in the pvc piece, and gave it a bit of grease. This was a carriage bolt, chosen to give enough of a head that I could machine it to give me a decent sized flat on the end. I also machined away the squared portion directly behind the head, reducing that diameter to 5/16 for this 3/8 bolt. That way I can screw it right in til it touches the plastic. It goes about as deep as I'll ever need it to, but if I do need it to be deeper, I can just cut off some of the plastic. The threads go in a bit over an inch, and the bore is drilled out from the other end to 3/8. No need to thread it all the way.

I could have simplified this and just used a normal bolt, but I wanted to be able to grip material down to about a half inch. This would have meant turning off the hex on the bolt head, leaving no way to adjust it. Otherwise I could simply have used a socket wrench. An alternative would have been to re-grind a hex head for a smaller socket, but I chose the pin wrench instead. If I need to use a smaller diameter adjusting bolt, I'll be forced to grind a hex onto it so I can adjust it. No way I'm going to cheap out and put a simple slot on the end of it. I hate those slippery flat blade screwdrivers.

Simple hold down

Zinom posted on the HSM forum about a simple hold down clamp he made:

Hey all, I often need to drill a hole in some thin stock that doesn't require a lot of precision so I don't like to spend much time on the set up.

*disclaimer* I use a small screwless vise almost exclusively so this may not be too useful to those with vises without vee grooves.

Threaded rod, scrap strap and a couple of set screws that fit in the vee groove to prevent the clamp from pulling upward.

Not a complex thing but for me it speeds up some operations and I hadn't seen anything similar in all the web surfing I've done.

---

This looked like a pretty handy thing to have. I think for a vise with V slot across it you could also use a rod for the bottom piece, and you wouldn't have to bother with the set screws. Also, a brass tip on the end of the thumbscrew would keep you from messing up the top of the vise.