With all the milling I am going to have to do on my next fork I decided to make a milling vise.
The rails are 24" long, 1" square tubing, with a 1"x1/8" strap welded to each end. The straps have a 3/8 hole drilled in the center.
The trolley is another piece of 1" square tubing with 3/8 rod connectors welded in each end.
I used carriage bolts welded to the tubing to bolt on a small vise, and to bolt the rail to my drill press.
I put it all together with some 3/8 all thread and some jam nuts.
I did a small test run with a piece of trash aluminum and it works great! I will have to measure and make sure the rails are square on the drill press when I use it for real. Its not as good as a real mill, so maybe when I do my fork legs ill have my buddy mill the edges of the cutouts, and ill do the center. I also may end up using my drill press plate as a smaller version to give me X&Y movement.
It will be interesting to see how much side load my harbor freight drill press will take before the chuck falls off...
The rails are 24" long, 1" square tubing, with a 1"x1/8" strap welded to each end. The straps have a 3/8 hole drilled in the center.
The trolley is another piece of 1" square tubing with 3/8 rod connectors welded in each end.
I used carriage bolts welded to the tubing to bolt on a small vise, and to bolt the rail to my drill press.
I put it all together with some 3/8 all thread and some jam nuts.
I did a small test run with a piece of trash aluminum and it works great! I will have to measure and make sure the rails are square on the drill press when I use it for real. Its not as good as a real mill, so maybe when I do my fork legs ill have my buddy mill the edges of the cutouts, and ill do the center. I also may end up using my drill press plate as a smaller version to give me X&Y movement.
It will be interesting to see how much side load my harbor freight drill press will take before the chuck falls off...
