Chinese Vise

[Downwindtracker2]

I'm almost at chips on my shop built 6" shaper. I'm using a 4" BusyBee "kurt style" on it. I was going to use the swivel as an adapter, but it takes up some height. So I took the jaws off least they get in the way when I slotted it. I could get it just fit. When I looked to put the jaws back on, there was mill scale on the bottoms. I assume jaws are supposed to be the same height? Oh well, coffee is finished, back to the Toolmaker surface grinder. BTW Grizzly vises are the same colour of green.

[stephenc]

I have a 4 inch grizzly I bought second hand , I'm pretty happy with it for the most part .

But more importantly. .. let's see some pictures of your shaper

[Downwindtracker2]

I didn't build it, I'm just modifying / completing. It would certainly be a colourful picture . I think Baldor grey blue is a classy machine colour, so I picked a paint card that looked like that. The last owner used orange for the guards and pulleys, I used Kabota orange . It's sorta purple and orange.

I finished the skate yesterday and the feed today.

[spro]

Sounds good and I wouldn't expect photos until near completion. Good info about that vise and mounting. I've considered an inexpensive (cheap) one also and they obviously need some tuning. The shaper vise for an Atlas 7" shaper is very low profile. The indexed swivel casting is very low also. They understood, even with the knee foot support, something could go awry. A tight envelope where the ram power could really shine.

[spro]

Heck. I wanted to talk about that vise.

[Downwindtracker2]

On the Chinese vise. I bought it on sale a number of years back to use on the drill press. When I opened the box I realized it was too heavy and awkward, so it stayed in the box until that someday mill. The mill/drill came with a nice Japanese conventional milling vise, so it stayed in the box until I got the shaper.

-the swivel plate was uneven and out of parallel, it was trued?? on a shaper
- the down wedging ball was very rough and so was the socket it fit into
- one of the jaws varies .007 in thickness
- and jaw heights were different as I posted.
-the screw isn't an acme ,rather just a metric? thread

I think I paid $79.99 but that was a while back. The vise bed itself is parallel to the bottom, within a thou or so. Which I would call good.

From my reading, OK, looking at pictures, shaper vises are low and wide, with the screw anchored at the stationary end.

For a bench top shaper like mine, a 3" vise would have been a better fit on the table.

[spro]

You are there. The jaws of the Atlas Shaper vise are 7/8" tall yet 4" wide. The height of the top of the jaws to the knee, with the swivel base, is 3". Milling machine vises and shaper vises are different. Edit. I shouldn't say that. Great vises are great but if they are too tall, consider how the shaper works. Enormous pressure even with the smaller ones, to cut laterally and accurately throughout its stroke.
The knee foot can compensate to stability of the knee and table but cannot be responsible for the lifting of work set above the mount axis. It is careful work and recent videos show that.

[pete]

Stefan Gottewinter on YouTube has a fairly small European made Gack shaper. He showed his where he built a new clapper box so it cuts on the pull stroke and has drawings on his website. The way almost all shaper vises are set up and the machines are designed to cut is your almost always doing the cutting towards the vises movable jaw when it would be far better to pull cut towards the fixed jaw. Other school of thought is put the vise on sideways and if or when you have a crash the workpiece can hopefuly be thrown out of the vise before irreplaceable machine parts break. On the little South Bends the vise swivel is pretty much built in with about a 1/2" hole bored and reamed in the table and a mating plug that fits the hole on the bottom of the vise with a degree scale above that. It might add 1/4" in height to the vise.