Thread: Schaublin's Universal Vice, the No.36.

Michael,

The vice is in bits. I removed the sliding jaw. It required a lot of tapping with a dead blow hammer to free it from the barrel. They definitely didn't want play in this vice! The indexer is the same, devoid of play. By 1974 the vice's French catalogue description had been elevated from Etau universel to Etau parallele universel de grande precision. Maybe the older versions didn't require a hammer for disassembly.

I will have a look at the taper pinned assembly tomorrow before I pick up a paint brush.

Bob.

Originally Posted by Michael G

Nicely done. Don't forget that you need a metric taper pin for the internals too - I've seen roll pins distort enough under loading such that they are a pain to get out, so probably should be done sooner rather than later.

Michael

It was too hot to paint so heeding Michael's advice I made a 50:1 taper pin this afternoon. To set the compound at the correct angle I used an indicator and adjusted it so that it moved 0.25mm over 0.984" (25mm) travel. It was far easier than I anticipated. I used 1214. There is some play in the thrust bearing assembly. Rummaging through my tapered reamers I discovered I had a 3mm reamer. I might make a new bush to reduce the play.

I had seen a YouTube clip where a bloke used a piercing saw to part something delicate in the lathe. Works well as long as the blade is prevented from skating. I turned the cutter around to created a shallow groove to locate the blade.

BT

I couldn't live with the snapped off corner of the tee slot so I milled the mess off and screwed and glued in a cast iron plug. Unfortunately, I found out slowly that I was a bit overzealous when I bored the plug for tapping. The black dot is the end of the tapped hole. At first I saw a tiny speck thinking it was a flaw in the cast iron. When the speck grew larger I realised it was my handywork.

The width of the metal below the upper portion of the tee was 6mm allowing a cut down M5 socket set screw to be installed to a depth of 9mm in the main casting and about 5mm in the plug. I turned a shoulder on the plug to ensure a tight fit up against the remaining shoulder of the tee slot. I thought I might end up with a green line of Loctite between the mating parts but fortunately the junction is close to invisible. The black dot diverts your attention . I think I will fill the hole with Devcon Steel Putty mixed with cast iron powder.

The 4E I used is a pretty close colour match to the cast iron of the vice. I'm wondering if I should have a go at the battle scarred other tee slot.

I'm not pretending the repair will be structurally sound enough to support the stop it's intended for. If I do make a stop, I would ensure that it is mounted in the undamaged section of the slot.

BT

That's a beautiful repair. Strength wise, you could probably clamp on that as the stop clamps both sides of the T slot. I wouldn't worry about the other side though as it's too small to interfere with the vice function.
I'm waiting to see what it looks like in new paint now.

Michael

Nice repair job, thanks for showing how to do it.
Kryn

I had been hoping to obtain confirmation of the jaw's upper bevel angle but I thought in its absence I'd try to measure the roughly 1.5mm wide remnant of the original bevel. I have a protractor but the results were vague, I tried the optical comparator but there was no sharp edge to focus on. Then I tried the small mag base I have with the Reglus attached. 17.5 degrees or pretty close to it.

Rather than use the boring head, I simply inserted the cut down boring bar in a chuck. Worked extremely well providing a pretty good finish on Ken's K110 bar. I am keen to see how the cermet inserts perform on something a bit less tough. If I could achieve a similar finish on 4140 I'd probably not bother with high speed steel cutters for facing.

I reassembled the vice to cut the jaws to length. Being able to accurately rotate the vice body 180 degrees made cutting the jaws a dream. I do love this vice.

BT





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Nicely done sir.

Ken

Very nice work BT.

Nothing better than retuning a nice tool to service.

Cheers

Piers

Ohh. Nice!

Now that you have such a spiffy vice does that mean that the standard of your work will be higher still and harder for the rest of us to match? (Damn!)

Michael
(Purveyor of vice to the Thomas family)

Thank you for your kind comments Ken, Piers and Michael.

What I hope this little exercise demonstrates is not to be intimidated by steels tougher than you would normally chose to work with. When Ken offered the K110, I felt that I couldn't really wriggle out of using it. My preference would have been some soft throw away jaws easily made from 1020. The idea of machining to size some steel that Ken had warned would destroy HSS was daunting. And it did do some destroying, one Presto 1" eight flute end mill, 4 Sutton cobalt HSS bits and a pair of Kyocera inserts. But the results were worth it.

BT

Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore

That's what I love about this forum, members are always willing to help one another. You were lucky to find that in there Michael, every time I went there you just about had to walk sideways down the various aisles, stuff stacked on top of everything. Has he had a major clean up, mind you that was about 10 years since I was there last.
Kryn

I'm very late to this thread, but I couldn't agree more Kryn. Whats more both Michael and Bob are "Serial Offenders" and have lots of previous form for helping others out. Well done you two, and also the many others who go out of your way to assist other members and visitors to the forum.
Thanks too BT for the pictorial essay on how to go about doing an interesting machining job, beautiful photos as usual, it's like having Ansel Adams illustrate industrial machining.

Piers told me Gary at Eccentric Engineering had a No.36 vice and it turned out that Gary had the adjustable vice stop. Gary took some time out from a busy schedule to photograph his stop and provide me with its critical dimensions. So this is a thank you to Gary and an excuse to Michael as to why the vice remains unpainted.

I used a piece of 4E cast iron for the clamp body and 4140 for the rest. The 4140 machines like butter when compared to Ken's K110! The bloke I work for's Kawasaki valve worked well as a washer backstop. The cardboard packers were used to provide an offset when I bored the through hole in the rod clamp.

BT

Nice work there Bob - I'd say you're up to at least $4000 now.

(Bob sent me an ebay ad a while back for another 36 vice -

Vice 1.jpg
The price blew us both away (the BIN price is around A$3,500) - for those not fluent in German, the vice has been repainted and both the handle and base are new).

Michael

Exquisite work BT. You set a standard for many of us to aim for.

Glad I could be of a small assistance with the Schaublin info sharing.

Cheers

Piers