Alfie,
I have a 6" cross-vice mounted just about permanently on my large (12 speed 2B) bench drill, which is a very solid machine and there is a table rack, so I can crank the heavy table/vice combination up and down. To be clear, this is not co-ordinate drilling, just a way to grip the work and then simply position it under the drill using the cross-vice…
Anyway, I find it very convenient and wanted something similar for my much smaller Cowells 3/8ths drill – and I already had a smaller 3" cross-vice. Using an ordinary drilling vice (bolted to the slots in the drill's table) was at best fiddly and sometimes a real pain. The problem was that the cross-vice seemed much too heavy to mount directly on the Cowells table – even if I made some kind of adaptor plate to do it. So I made a set of simple 'lifting' plates (just plywood) that sit over the drills base plate and lift the cross-vice to a usable drilling height without damaging anything. The normal table swings out the way and (if not needed) the cross-vice just lifts off. The 9mm birch ply 'plates' are 1,2 and 3 'thickness' deep and can be removed in any combination to lower or raise the vice. Captive nuts in the base secure the M6 bolts that clamp everything together…
Just remembered an important point – the vice clamping 'handle' is normally on the 'wrong' end (e.g. the drills pillar end) for simple X & Y vice travel. So I drilled two M6 holes in the other end of the vice part and moved it. It just about misses the 'Y' handle – so not ideal – but you cannot use the (at least my 3" ) cross-vice without doing this…
So – not co-ordinate drilling – but much easier to set up and use than just a simple drill vice… Perhaps this helps..
Regards,
IanT
Edited By IanT on 07/08/2017 19:10:32