I'm looking for the above for two drill presses (not for milling) but can't really find anywhere with a wide selection to choose from (so far Ebay seems to have the most in one place). Can anyone add to the following places to look;
McMaster-Carr Grizzly MSC KBC Sears
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:04:41 -0400, "Oparr" calmly ranted:
------------------------------ Gator: The other white meat! ------------------------------
I have owned a couple X-Y vises for drill presses (these make more sense to me than X-Y tables) and I can say that quality varies a lot. I didn't like the one I got from J&L, and I liked the one I got from Grizzly. In fact, I kept the one I had gotten from Grizzly after I sold my drill press (actually, the drill press before the one I just sold, so it fit the one two drill presses ago) and it's on my large pile of stuff to find new owners for. I think it's this one:
If anyone wants these (preference will be given to someone close or to someone attending GEARS in Portland because crating these for shipment would be a bummer) then email me offline. I'd take $25, you pay for shipping (or ideally, pick it up or meet me @ GEARS).
Grant Erwin Kirkland, Washington To email me, see
Thanks, that popular table seems to be $20 cheaper at Enco.
On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 09:26:40 -0400, "Oparr" calmly ranted:
I found a 6x6 cross vise at HF for $23 and it's a real POS: +- half a turn resolution, but it's good enough to facilitate positioning of a piece for drilling. I think these and larger Encos would do a helluva lot better.
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Perhaps you mean there is +/- half a turn of backlash in the handle? Like any XY vise these should have infinite resolution in the sense that you *can* put any spot within its travel under the spindle.
Enough with word quibbling. The big deal on these vises isn't how cheesy the screws feel (which is plenty cheesy). It's how square and true they are machined, and how rigid they are (or aren't) and how well the gibs fit, things like that. I have found that on all these XY vises I've had to replace the gib screws with higher quality fasteners, usually US made thumbscrews, and I've had to lock the ways in both directions whenever I'm going to drill, to prevent chatter. Thus another metric is whether the vise moves slightly when the gib screws are locked down.
I found my XY vise from Grizzly to work well, a lot better than the one I bought later from J&L. My guess is that like many inexpensive Asian machine tool accessories they can be improved significantly with a little thought and rework.
Grant
Enco seems to have the best prices for the same items. Contemplating whether to buy two of the #201-2826 or one of them and the Palmgren MCT18 (#891-4153).
On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 16:50:01 -0700, Grant Erwin calmly ranted:
Yes. It had a loose sleeve which otherwise would have kept the backlash adjusted.
I knew I wasn't getting a precision instrument for $23, nor have I needed it, so I haven't spent much time on making it a better toy.
Ayup. Almost -any- tool can be tuned to work a whole lot better.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- The more we gripe, *
Have any of you used a vise like this to position PCB boards for drilling? Is it worth it? (I've been holding/positioning them by hand, and I don't always get a good spot for the hole.)
- Owen -
One of the X-Y tables I'm getting will be used exclusively for drilling PCB boards. I too have been holding/positioning by hand. Just as you can use the "T" slots to hold down a vise on a X-Y table so can you hold down the PCB and sacrificial backing (or anything else for that matter). Don't think I'll ever buy a X-Y vise since "X-Y table plus any old vise == X-Y vise and more" in my case. However, that may not be the case with all drill press setups.
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