Making ARC’s ‘Versatile Milling Vise’ a little more versatile.

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Making ARC’s ‘Versatile Milling Vise’ a little more versatile.

This topic has 10 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 8 June 2025 at 22:48 by bernard towers.

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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27 December 2023 at 19:44 #701937
samuel heywood
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@samuelheywood23031
Ok, nothing ground breaking here, but if you were thinking of buying one, might just tip the balance.

ARC versatile 80mm milling vice~ not a lot of money really & offers the potential to hold quite large workpieces.

Still on that steep learning curve regarding milling, generally i prefer round things to square things, so lathe is 1st choice, but milling is certainly interesting &….different.

Why oh why does nobody (as far as i can tell) offer a machine vice tailor made to fit the Sieg x1/ x2 table?

Maybe the worldwide market just isn’t big enough, though i thought the x1 & in particular the x2 were popular.

Anyway if the mohammed won’t come to the mountain…..

Mod. 1 ~ fixing centres of the vice without swivel base 100mm.

I milled the fixing slots a little using an 8mm EM , as i prefer to remove the mininum of material, now i can fit the vice lengthways on the bed, which to me is preferable & less “in the way” though there WILL be jobs where you will need to mount crossways on the bed.

Mod 2~ the vice is provided with various alternative mounting positions for the jaws.

Arc state this is for “light work” I guess anything an X1 will do counts thus.

However when mounted in the alternative positions, there’s not a lot of “purchase”

I decided to make some new jaws. The originals are 24mm x 3/8″ x approx 82mm long.

Opted for some 1 14/” x 3/8″ GFS.

Initially the price of ~ GFS put me off somewhat, but i got lucky & got the required size for a 1980’s price of £7.99 posted!!

Initially i was going to make 4 new jaws, i’ve only made two, will see how things pan out for now.

Though I now think 3 larger jaws might make for max potential with a minimum of jaw swapping?

Probably not best practice to have vice jaws sticking up too much~ but the X1 isn’t exactly a powerhouse, so i think i’ll be ok.

No i didn’t harden them, i lack the tools & know how to do a good job on this.

Milling the ends square & to size, the X1 coped really well.

I can’t say i enjoyed drilling the counterbores for the allen bolts much on my little mill though!

Machinability (power) factor of GFS must be around 1.5, with mild steel 1.0 & Ali 0.3, so was hard graft drilling relatively big holes in a “hard” steel.

Well, maybe that will give someone some ideas?

Maybe you’ve already done some more impressive improvements to said vice?

If so, please share.

This is probably pretty basic to some of you, b
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31 December 2023 at 14:40 #703053
old mart
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@oldmart
The jaws are fine as long as you don’t overtighten them and you take gentler cuts.
1 January 2024 at 09:43 #703302
Martin Connelly
Participant
@martinconnelly55370
I take it that your lathe is not able to handle a piece of metal as big as these jaws as making the counterbores in a lathe would have been an option if you had a big enough lathe and 4 jaw chuck. It would have been less troubling than a lightweight/low power mill.

You could also have reduced the work of making the counterbores by stepping a small end mill around the already drilled holes then finishing to size with a correct size end mill.

One other thing to be careful with when working with hardenable steels is to be sure to keep cutting at all times with plenty of coolant from a spray bottle or similar. Creating a hot spot by rubbing and not cutting can cause hard spots where a drill can then struggle to cut the material. You have to resort to a fresh carbide drill to carry on sometimes as it can get glass hard, as I know from experience.

Martin C
1 January 2024 at 10:09 #703307
JasonB
Moderator
@jasonb
Even less work would have been to not counter bore them, as the screw heads are on the opposite sides to where the work goes it does not matter if they stick out. Longer screws would be advisable though as with the jaws at the end all load is on the screws hence why they say suitable for light work
5 January 2024 at 19:31 #704923
samuel heywood
Participant
@samuelheywood23031
Thanks Martin, yes i could have done it on the mini lathe, if i’d have thought about it,which i didn’t.

Guess that’s where lots of experience comes in? Glad you pointed it out.

Jason, I was keeping the option open of swapping new jaws to any position, but again, worth remembering your point.
7 June 2025 at 19:40 #801933
Mark Hall
Participant
@markhall37441
It’s ODD as the Arc swivel vices I’ve used all had cast iron bases & they are identical to yours, both the 80mm & 125mm , the top section was steel
7 June 2025 at 20:52 #801940
old mart
Participant
@oldmart
I bought a set of 7 counterbores on ebay for about £24, they fit in metric clearance holes and are intended for SHCS caphead screws. It saves setting up for using an endmill for making counterbores.
8 June 2025 at 09:03 #801997
Clive Foster
Participant
@clivefoster55965
One minor point about the, incredibly useful, caphead screw counterbores that frequently surprises the unwary is the size of the screw clearance hole.

Many folk are in the habit of drilling a hole just big enough for the bolt to enter, either nominal diameter or a touch bigger, so the bolt shank acts as a position locator.

This is way tighter than the official clearance hole which could best be described as a rattling good fit. Plenty of clearance means that things will assemble without needing silly tight tolerances on hole and thread position. A practical way of going about things. After all a drill press isn’t a particularly precise tool.

But it does mean you need to provide means of location if things have to assemble in accurate alignment. Generally a flange or a dowel will be used.

Sensible engineering but who can buy the one or two dowels in the size a specific job may need and where from? Good enough equivalents in reasonable sizes can easily be turned but the small ones more likely to be appropriate for Model Engineering work can be tricky to make. Unless you have an appropriate box tool.

I find rollers from a redundant needle roller bearing make excellent small dowels. Judicious scavenging means I now have about 6 lifetimes supply of potentially useful sizes.

Clive
8 June 2025 at 09:50 #802030
John Hinkley
Participant
@johnhinkley26699
I found myself in a similar predicament to that faced by Samuel, back in 2022, when I was making a fixture plate for my mill. The size of the plate was exceeded the capacity of the vice’s jaws and I wasn’t confident in the ability of the standard jaws’ ability to grip the workpiece sufficiently well using the normal relocated fixings. After a little thought, I came up with a solution that utilised the original jaws, relocated to the rear of the fixed jaw, but with longer than standard screws, and sandwiching a couple of parallels as shown below;

The use of two parallels kept the new “jaw” at right angles to the workpiece.

On the moveable jaw, I was able to just mount the vice jaw horizontally on the top, like this:

For a later project, and to accommodate an even larger piece of flat material, I replicated the arrangement used on the fixed jaw with one on the moveable jaw. This greatly increased the gripping range of the vice. On the downside, it really stretched the X-Y envelope of the mill (a Warco VMC)!

John
8 June 2025 at 17:59 #802109
John Purdy
Participant
@johnpurdy78347
Slightly off topic but as Clive says rollers from needle bearings make excellent substitutes for dowel pins. I have a drawer full of small ones salvaged from auto universal joints. Four caps full of rollers on each joint. Most are around .070 (#50 drill) in dia. Due to slight variation in sizes, measuring a selection up usually gets one that is a nice sliding or light drive fit in a drilled #50 hole as required.

John
8 June 2025 at 22:48 #802131
bernard towers
Participant
@bernardtowers37738
Glad im not the only one who does things like that John.
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