I sure all of us has one of those friends that has pretty much everything. I have a couple of friends that fall in that category but John is one of those guys that is really hard to find a gift for. He has his own machine shop so he can make anything he wants when it comes to tools. The one thing he doesn't have much of is time. Unfortunately I cant give him a gift wrapped package full of more hours in the day but what I can give him is something he would probably make for himself if he just had the time.Ten or fifteen years ago I made a little sub plate for the milling machine on a whim. As it turns out this has become a very useful tool that comes out of the box on a regular basis. When I made it I thought it was a cute idea never realizing how handy it would be.
I had to make a few plates the other day that had arrays of tapped holes in them which gave me the idea to make a few of these sub plate kits as gifts for machinist friends. The idea is that this is a scaled down version of the big strap clamp kit that everybody gets with their milling machine. Everything I seem to be working on is shrinking in size so I had a need to hold small delicate parts without crushing them and have access to do the work. The actual plate can be almost any size as long as it can easily fit your primary vise. My original is roughly 6 x 6 and an inch thick. And after years of use is still over.800 thick.
Part of the idea is that the plate is semi sacrificial. That is that I don't feel bad if I take a light facing cut on it to make it perfectly flat to the machine.
Metalworking: Doing It Better.pdf download. Metalworking: Doing It Better - Kindle edition by Tom Lipton. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC. Tom Lipton is a career metalworker. He learned to weld at the tender age of nine and has worked in many different job shops that required machine and sheet metal work, along with welding fabrication skills. His industrial experience encompasses consumer product development, laboratory equipment, medical devices, and custom machinery design.
This is particularly important for engraving work. If you poke through once in a while and mark it up its no big deal. The plate is the easiest part of the kit to make. Many jobs that you might make a special holding fixture for to clamp directly in the vise can be handled by clamping them down with strap clamps. People forget about this probably because the standard clamps are so big. The other roadblock to strap clamping parts is typically the vise needs to be removed to use the table of the milling machine.
I know that I hate to remove the vise for a quick job on the table. This mini strap clamp kit is well worth the investment in time to make if for nothing else so you don't have to take the vise off. Don't count on finding one of these in your stocking this year. Santa only made a couple, so you probably need to get busy and make one for yourself.Happy Holidays. Thank you so much for sharing this idea. I made one as one of the first projects on my new (to me) mill in the garage.
(I would also like to thank you for your book and this blog. It is nice to be able to take in some of the wisdom you have earned over the years.
Being one of the Engineering folks by day, it helps me to hear more thoughts from the 'trenches'. I hope I haven't been too bad so far, but I know my designs can always use improvement.