How to blow an entire day drilling 6 holes.

[John Conroy]

I needed to drill some holes at an angle and was struggling to find a way to hold the part securely. I made a vise pallet some time ago that allows mounting parts at an angle but I had no easy way of clamping these parts to the pallet. Here is the pallet and some of the clamps I have used in the past. It can be mounted in the vise in either direction. When I made it I only had a 4” vise so I wish I had made it larger now.

I have a small drill press vise that can be used for light milling and I wanted to be able to attach it to the pallet in both directions so I came up with these mounting solutions.

I removed one of the 3 bolts holding the flat plate to the round part and installed a stud on its place.

I made up some sleeve/spacers to hold the small vise to the pallet.

To mount the vise in the other direction I made up a cross brace to go under the pallet and used a couple of old big/block Chevy rod bolts as fasteners. Then I made up some more spacer/sleeves.

It’s amazing how I can blow a whole day making tools to complete a 30 minute drilling job but these tools will come in handy in the future I’m sure.

 

[Alexander]

John what am I missing here. Is there a reason why you didn't just tilt the head and drill the holes using the quill. I am confused why you mounted the parts on an angle just for drilling. I can see that miling head tilts is that corect?

 

[John Conroy]

Getting the head of the mill trammed perfectly is a major pain in the butt so I prefer to use other methods for drilling or milling angles. I can set up to do angles and back to square in minutes with this set-up.

 

[EricB]

Haha seems like a fun problem-solving day, John. What parts were you working on?

Sent from my B15 using Tapatalk

 

[PeterT]

My RF-45 mill has a pin detent that supposedly sets the head perpendicular to the head. But I found I could dial it in a bit better & it improved my flycutter milling which had a strange pattern. So right now its not actually fully engaged in the factory pin detent & I'm kind of reluctant to change it unless I have to. I thought long & hard about swiveling the mill for making my radial engine heads because there were lots of operations at an angle. In the end I made dedicated angle jigs so the vise & mill head could stay put.

But I did visualize making a mill head setup tool like a big T. It has a horizontal arm that spans the table for maximum accuracy. In the middle it has a fixed vertical round pin that gets secured in the spindle with a collet. On both ends are 2 el-cheapo dial indicators. You would have to set it up once, but the idea is to leave it that way. Basically with the head semi tight you tap it rotationally direction until the 2 dials read the exact same depth number & lock it there. Seems a lot easier than tramming along the whole table or using a L shape (single dial) swing arm & diving the distance until it converges which is what I did.

ps John - I really like that sine bar plate. What are the dowel rods made out of because you would have had to drill & tap. Are they hardened?

Also, I have a feeling I should be using those screw jacks more for stability. Is it basically a nut & bolt type mechanism (that I could make one) or is there a swivel ball type joint to accommodate slightly off-angle setups?

 

[John Conroy]

Eric, I was actually making a rack to hold thread spools for my wife's sewing room.

Peter, everything on the sine plate is just cold rolled steel. The screw jacks are Starrett brand and they do have a swivel at the top but I also have some cheap ones that don't. They are easy to make but I got the brand new Starrett ones at a garage sale for $5 each so I couldn't resist. The pictures are just for show, I should really have the sine plate centered in the vise and have a hold down clamp on it to keep it from getting sucked up into a drill bit or end mill.

 

[Janger]

The pictures are gone! Any chance you could repost them or just provide a link to your other photo site? Thanks John.

 

[John Conroy]

I'm away from home right now ND only have my phone so it's a bit of a struggle to post a bunch of photos. This is link to the album the photos are in, I hope.

https://johnconroy.smugmug.com/Milling-vise-pallet/n-GJNQvJ/i-QzLgf9K

 

[Janger]

Thanks so much John. I can see some mods already for mine.

 

[Janger]

I was thinking I’d tap all the holes them 1/4-20. Too small? Center drilling to start...
And I blew the anchor hole locations to the side - programming error.

 

[John Conroy]

I went with 5/16" holes but 1/4" is probably fine

 

[Janger]

1/4 it is... CNC drilling is great! 30+ holes. I haven’t learned the drill pecking cycle yet so this is straight through. You can see at the end I had to re drill some holes. The motor was slipping I think it was too loose. I also used the circular pocket cycle G12 to counter sink the big anchor holes at the top of the pallet using a 1/2 end mill. That’s not in the video. This vid should give @kevin.decelles his fix.

 

[Tom O]

It’s even better when followed by a tapping cycle!

 

[Janger]

Tapping.... turn on spindle 270 rpm. Manually lower and let it go on it’s own. Stop and coast to a stop. Reverse! Spiral flute tap into aluminum. Works fine. Used some aluminum tap fluid... 25 holes to go...

 

[Janger]

More progress. Need to make the round machinist jack support next.

I was able to power tap and chamfer the 35 holes in about an hour. I was quite pleased at that. Hand tapping was not going to be fun. @John Conroy thanks for letting me take over your thread here!

 

[John Conroy]

Very nice work John, I'm enjoying your pictures and comments.

 

[Janger]

Thanks John C .

Angle vise for golf club...

 

[Janger]

5 degree angle.

 

[Janger]

I bought a 2” tool vise from kms and has to make some L shaped hold downs. This is turning out pretty good - there’s some cock ups but overall I like the results.