Axminster Power Tools milling vices on offer

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

If you are in the market for a milling vice, Axminster Power Tools have some on clearance at the moment.

 

4″ K4 swivel base vice £38.16

4″ VA swivel base vice £52.28

5″ VA swivel base vice £57.12

 

The more expensive vices include carriage – if you order before 9 am tomorrow 21st December, the usual £4.95 carriage on the K4 is waived. All prices include Vat.

 

I seem to think that these are Vertex units painted cream for Axminster .

 

I have ordered a 4″ VA for my FB2 clone milling machine- the jaws open wider then my current K4, which always seems “just too small” in that regard.

 

To find these, click on the “Clearance offers” banner on the home page – the vices are on page 8 of the the offers. There are some other engineering offers in amongst the wood stuff, including lathes, chucks & collets.

 

No connection with Axminster, other than as a satisfied customer.

 

Regards,

 

Nigel B.

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

[SpringbokParticipant @springbok]

Hi Nigel

These are extremely inacurate vices for a milling machine / mill drill or anything else come to that. no matter what the flavour or colour. Please spend a little bit more dosh and get a decent engineers vice. The vice that you are talking about I now use occasionally in my braising kiln to hold items.and has now been well tempered.

These all come out out of the same chineese factory and are usualy given as a freeby when you purchase a machine.

I apologise for being so negative to your posting but only talking from experiance.

 

Have a nice christmas

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

[JonParticipant @jon]

The cheap K4 is very accurate some of my best stuff was less than 1/4″ runout at 100 yards. Broke one and replaced with the same 9 year ago £45. These are the ones given with some machines, my brand is the Chester and silver.

The moveable jaw lifts thats it, just press down on the job.

 

Tried to emulate the Kurt with the VA, no where near as accurate as the K4 but more substantial, i havent managed to break the 5″ width open 6″ in 9 years daily use.

 

 

[Chris TriceParticipant @christrice43267]

DON’T assume they’re Vertex. I made that mistake with a 6″ rotary table.

[_Paul_Participant @_paul_]

I sincerely hope you have better luck with yours.

I was very dissapointed with the VA vice I bought from Axminster it was so badly made they agreed to refund my money however after not turning up to collect it twice we mutually agreed I would keep it for half price (about £30 at the time) which I guess is still more than it is worth.

 

First thing you will notice is that nice looking chrome handle is such a sloppy *hexagon* fit it falls off quite a bit, interesting finish on it too a sort of lumpy bad grinder texture.

 

Leadscrew bearings are awful as you may find out, the leadscrew in mine has about 1/8″ up and down movement bearings are best described as “crunchy” laughably it has an oil nipple which as there is so much slack when used all the oil just oozes straight out.

 

Had to adjust the moving jaw after about a week of use as it developed rather a lot of movement initially is was badly fitted but then it just worked loose, still dosent fit quite as well as one might expect of a vice that is marked as precision….

Even after a lot of fiddling jaw lift is in the unnacceptable range.

 

The Fixed jaw is held by a square key mine dosent fit properly it looks as though the key seat hasnt been machined right.

Mine was painted an awful green colour sort of green the local council uses…paint is quite thick covers some of the worst of the casting roughness/defects though.

 

The list goes on…in the end I put it down to experience and bought a proper Vertex vice what a difference.

 

Regards

 

Paul

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

Well, it’s due to be delivered today, so I will soon find out ! If it is “not fit for purpose” it will be going back. I’ll post the results of accuracy checks when I have completed them.

 

I have been happy with the Vertex K4, which is well made & accurate. If it admitted 100mm rather than 80 I would probably not have looked for an addition – no plans to move the K4 on.

 

Regards,

 

Nigel B.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

What a pitiful state we have got into! Why the hell don’t they double the price and actually make something that can actually do the job. I have a 4″ Abwood which is an excellent vice from another now defunct British manufacturer. I like the features of the Kurt clone but I wont buy crap by choice. I suggest any one who buys one of these vices and is not happy with it makes a loud vocal complaint, perhaps our Eastern cousins might up their game then and produce tools which actually are fit for purpose.

Tony

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Hi

 

I have a Vertex 4in rotary table and two Soba branded milling vices, the second smaller one was bought because of the quality of the first. All these items seem to be well made and accurate and as such I am very satisfied with them.

 

Its the same old problem that people are looking for quality at bargain basement prices and then complain when the quality doesn’t come up to their expectations. This isn’t a new phenomenon just linked to the import of far eastern tools and tooling as you only have to go back a few decades to see that crap products were being produced by western companies, UK included, and sold cheap. Again these were at the low end of the market price wise and the old adage of ‘You get what you pay for’ is as true now as it was then.

 

Moral if you want Rolls Royce quality don’t buy a Lada and then bitch when it falls apart. Perhaps if we had had deeper pockets and been prepared to pay more then some of the better UK companies would have survived, had capital to invest in modernising their designs, improved their production methods and then been able to possibly lower their prices.

 

Just a thought/rant on quality versus cost.

 

Happy Christmas to all and if there is a quality product in your stocking then Lucky You

 

Regards

 

Martin

Edited By Martin W on 21/12/2011 18:16:39

[Raymond AndersonParticipant @raymondanderson34407]

Hello All,

On the subject of milling vices, about a month ago I purchased a new GRESSEL milling vice I was fortunate enough to get a good discount [that softened the price blow a bit] and it is a stunning piece of kit, it’s accuracy will far exceed mine.

I have had a few different make over the years Rohm, Kurt and a Taiwanese one, but of the three only the Rohm would be comparable in quality [and price]

I certainly agree with Martin W Quality v cost . I prefer to buy known production types of tooling as I feel it saves me money in the long term.

Regards,

Raymond.

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I have a rag-bag of milling vices. I managed to overtighten the swivel one and break the fixed jaw off it… managed a repair though!

 

My SOBA one had the jaw mounting faces at an angle (as in over a degree out of true) and had to be trued up.

 

The cheap tilting vice that came free with my mill has been surprisingly useful.

 

The best vice of the lot was £20 from Proops. Ground to a mirror finish all over, smooth as silk and dead square. Unfortunately as a toolmaker type it’s abit slow to use as you have to clamp it down.

 

Neil

 

“All I want for Christmas is a bi-metal bandsaw blade, and a motor and inverter and…”

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

Fedex delivered to work around 12.30 today – a well packaged, 21kg box.

 

Unfortunately, it contained a dark green painted vice much as described by Paul above. The only ground face I could see other than the jaw plates was the top of the moving jaw & that had savage wheel bounce marks – the other working surfaces being milled. The jaw plates had edges you could shave with. The general paint finish gave the impression that the castings had been dipped before machining.

 

The chromed pivoting handle fitted the screw hexagon fine, but the screw bearing was a poor fit in the casting. I have not come across a milling vice with a fine pitch vee-form thread before. The moving jaw was a very poor, sloppy fit, with gritty oil under the faces when it was moved from the delivery position.

 

It is being collected for a refund tomorrow, on the grounds that it was not as described & did not warrant the “precison” tag. I was offered a “better quality” version of the same design at a reduced price, but was unwilling to take the risk unseen.

 

Very disappointed with this (and told them so), having always had good quality products from Axminster previously . This unit appeared to have been made down to a price, not up to a standard. I will take the opportunity to inspect the offerings at Harrogate next year.

 

Apologies for misleading anyone – done in good faith based on previous experience with the supplier.

[JonParticipant @jon]

Not good then

The moveable jaw is adjustable so when tightening it pushes down. The problem is you cant wind mine back past half way when nipped up.

Bearings are shocking.

Glad mine is a better state than all others mentioned above.

As regards accuracy, i cannot mill, remove and put back in, it always sits differently.

It was quite hard to get the jaws lined up using a touch probe.

Got me thinking now, whip the cheapy off the spare mill same as a K4.

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

HI

 

As an aside the larger of my two Soba vices has 75mm jaws which open to 75mm. The jaws are dead square, as far as I can reasonably measure, to the ground surface between the jaws and to the mill table when mounted. Once I have aligned the fixed jaw with mill ‘x’ axis and established one corner of the fixed jaw, using an edge finder for the fixed face and one end, I zero the table dials. After that I can mill parts and remove and replace them with no loss of registration, in fact once the vice datum has been set I can repeatably mill similar parts and have no significant variations in dimensions, certainly within + 2 thou.. The finish of the vice is very good both on the exposed metal surfaces and the paint work, no rough patches.

 

This is based solely on my experience and the usual caveat re interests in companies etc applies.

 

Regards

 

 

Martin

[alan frostParticipant @alanfrost17805]

All I can say Nigel is thanks for the tip. My Axminster vice arrived this morning (almost before I had ordered it-how do they do it??). Not up to Axminsters usual quality but still very impressed. Except for the v form thread mine seems very well made and for £57 I was n’t expecting sub micron accuracy.

I don’t understand half the users of this forum who seem to expect to pay £1 and get £500 quality. I have some good quality vices ,including an Abwood ,none of which approach the Axminster one for value. Whats more it came with the vital tenons for alignment. I have n’t had time yet to thoroughly check it but I’m sure that a couple of hours machining will give me a pretty high quality vice and even replacing the clamp screw with a square or Acme thread won’t be a huge job if i deem it necessary. Either way if I cost my time at an exorbitant say £25 an hour (exorbitant because I shall enjoy doing it-paid for pleasure) I shall end up with a very good quality vice for £107. This is about 25% to 30% of what I would expect to pay for for a vice of the quality I expect it to end up at.

Oh , and if I was so shallow as to object to the colour , I could repaint in any colour I want in another half hour or so . That would n’t change the Incredible value a lot.What would you like Myford Grey, Panther pink , non-council green, virgin white– you don’t get those choices with a Kurt !!! ,

[_Paul_Participant @_paul_]

£57 for a doorstop, I guess that is “Incredible” value

 

[alan frostParticipant @alanfrost17805]

Paul. I have a doorstop. If you like I could forward to you and you could see if you could produce a vice of the quality the Axminster will be in two hours machining. Tell you what I’ll err on the side of foolhardiness and grant you two days machining.

As the owner of a CVA toolroom lathe, a Haighton Major mill and a Fritz Werner mill I am fairly well placed to judge top quality, good and poor machinery and doorstops. Would that my skill matched the quality of the machines but most experienced machinists can produce more accurate work with almost any equipment than a poor machinist with Swiss quality machines. All it takes is flexibility and imagination, and a bit of fettling. The colour of the machine is usually immaterial.

[_Paul_Participant @_paul_]

Alan Thanks for the extremely kind offer but I already have a very nice (not green) doorstop

If you wouldn’t mind though once you have finished fettling your Axminster Vice could you post up a few pics or perhaps even some tips on what you did as I am sure like me there must be others who would be very interested in your two hour fix.

Regards

Paul

[Anonymous]

Posted by alan frost on 22/12/2011 13:06:29:

 

Except for the v form thread mine seems very well made and for £57 I was n’t expecting sub micron accuracy.

 

Oh dear, my Kurt machine vice has a V form thread, and it only came in blue; I must have been diddled.

 

Andrew

[alan frostParticipant @alanfrost17805]

Paul, sorry for delay, spent afternoon visiting Grandkids. Only needed 3 minutes actually. Thats how long it took to verify with a piece of ground flat stock in the jaws and a clock to check the jaws were pretty well perfectly square with the base .Total maching time zero.

Harold Hall’s excellent “Milling a complete course” on page 86 will tell you practically all you need to know about bringing a vice (in this case a drill press vice ) up to milling standards. As Harold is using a cheapo drill press vice he only advocates this for vertical milling but obviously the Axminster vice is of more than sufficient mass and rigidity to apply the same principles for horizontal or vertical milling. I obviously did n’t have to mill one side and end of the vice to squareness with the jaws as as I pointed out it came with the all important tenons, although I will obviously have to check their alignment when I use the vice in anger, but the omens look good.

If you are interested in vices (and who is n’t ) Rick Sparber submitted an excellent series of posts to the Yahoo shaper group , where as a group(along with the milling group ) we jointly designed a shaper vice which Rick made. As Rick pointed out even the hugely expensive Kurt vices (and there are better ones ) are not that good at operating as lockdown vices. A shaper vice of course in many ways has more stringent demands made on it than a milling vice and the Axminster vice looks very suitable and has the jaw mass to make a good shaper vice wirh a leadscrew modified to pull the movable jaw to the fixed jaw instead of pushing. Unfortunately altho not excessively high, it is a little higher than I would like in a shaper vice. The old joke is of course that if you’re lucky enough to buy a shaper with vice for £1000 you are paying £999 for the vice and £1 for the shaper. Now a shaper vice for £57–that would be something !!

 

Edit– a PS will post a pic to show how the jaw mating after repeated openings and closing is perfect with the “join ” invisible and no detectable ridge anywhere around the jaws using my calibrated finger nail. Should add the clamping force thanks to what IMO is the optimum design of vice handle seems massive, Also just read Andrews post–do Kurts really have a vee form thread ?? -the cheapskates!!

Edited By alan frost on 22/12/2011 22:03:24

[_Paul_Participant @_paul_]

Alan thanks for that I am glad you have had better luck than I.

 

Vices! I have five shapers but alas not one original vice amongst them , I have half heartedly followed the vice topic over on the yahoo Shaper group Ricks? vice looks an interesting design but not for me.

 

I’ve just bought a 4″ screwless vice from Arc Eurotrade to try on my Elliott 10M and my mill, if its successful there are designs available for home made versions of it facets of which would seem to lean toward construction by shaper.

Didnt know Kurt’s had V form threads

 

Regards

 

Paul

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

What’s a lockdown vice?

 

Andrew

[alan frostParticipant @alanfrost17805]

Where do them shaper vices go ?? I’ve had two 10Ms, neither with a vice. BBC machine tools at Carluke had,a few years back a lot of 10M vices but they wanted more than I paid for my shapers. I called in about six months ago as someone wanted a 10M vice but they had got rid of their big” hanger” of m/c tools (probably gone to China) and no 10M s.

 

By that time I had read Adrian Nicolsons article on shaper vices (homeworkshop forum) and knew that although Elliotts usually had good vices this was n’t true for the 10M vice. Adrian has a few shapers and is pretty knowledgeable (including two big Elliotts with the proper and good vices they fitted to their 14 inch shapers, and a 10M )

 

Rick’s vice seems pretty good and he’s achieving some amazingly good finishes on a modified Gingery shaper (and he’s still chasing better-the chain drive is currently under very close scrutiny ) but due to the size limitations of the Gingery I did n’t like his mounting method and he’s had to put up with milled finishes on the vice elements. I’ve suggested he runs the non-critical surfaces over a linisher.

 

I did get a very good design of rack vice with my FW mill (vice manufacturer unknown ) and I must have a look at the arc Eurotrade one you mention.

[alan frostParticipant @alanfrost17805]

A lock down vice as I understand it is a vice that does n’t like headaches. To avoid them as you tighten it ,the vice applies a fair bit of the clamping force downwards so that you don’t have to mallet the workpiece downwards with a gentleman’s persuader. I think its an American term. Along with the Ozzies they are good at descriptive names.

 

Oh the edit vanished -I was going to say who could ever forget “budgie smugglers” or closer to our interests a “come along ” (one of them horizontal lever hoists we all ” illegally” use vertically for pulling engines out of cars-until we get our first engine crane)

Edited By alan frost on 23/12/2011 00:38:09

Edited By alan frost on 23/12/2011 00:41:16

[Anonymous]

Alan: Thanks for the explanation; turns I knew the principle, just didn’t know what it was called!

 

As far as I’m aware my Kurt vice acts as a ‘lockdown’ vice. I did measure the movable jaw lift a while back; I can’t remember the exact figure, but it was on the order of a few tenths. That’s why I bought it; I was fed up with the ‘no brand’ secondhand vice that came with my secondhand vertical mill. It had a jaw lift of about 20 thou.

 

I wouldn’t ever use the Kurt vice on my shaper. I already have what I think is a proper shaper vice, made by Abwood. It didn’t come with the shaper, bought later off Ebay, about £20 as I remember. It’s a big b*gger with 8″ wide jaws, too heavy for me to lift, so now it’s on the shaper that’s where it stays!

 

Regards,

 

Andrew

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