- Hello and welcome to
this Haas Tip of the Day. Today, we're gonna be
giving away our secrets on setting up a vise on your mill. Now, before we set our vise on the table, we need to clear away the chips. First with our brush, then we'll clean those T-slots with our handy T-slot tool, and we'll finish up
with a quick wash down. Our next step is to stone
our table and our vise. Right. Thanks. What kind of stone are we gonna use? Well, for that we've got a few choices. In my tool box I usually carry a four inch round combination stone. This one is silicon carbide. It's a little aggressive for just placing a vise on the table. So, if you do have a
silicon carbide stone, be sure to use the fine
side and not the rough. Now, a good all-around stone
that a lot of shops use and we use at the factory, is an oil filled, aluminum oxide stone. It's a combination stone that has a rough side and a fine side. And, again, we're just checking for burrs, so we'll use the fine side. Now, before we can stone the table, we have to clean it with
a solvent or alcohol. If we don't get the gunk off the table, then that gunk is gonna load up our stone. Now, with a gunk-free table, we're gonna break out our stone. And, using the fine side, we're gonna check for dents, kinda knock down any
burrs that might be there. (stone sliding against metal) If you feel it catch on something, that might be a high spot
that we have to look at or a chip that we've gotta break loose. Now, when we're done stoning, I like to take my bare hand and just wipe away any
swarf that might be there. And we're gonna do the
same thing on our vise. Now, because we've got raw iron exposed, we don't want it to rust. So, I'm gonna use some RP,
some rust preventative, and just put a thin coat on my table. And, on my vise. Now, when I place the vise, I'm gonna slide it forward
and back a few times. This way, any swarf that I've missed, is gonna get trapped in these T-slots. Now, we've put our two bolts onto the vise, and we've lightly snugged both of them. Now we're gonna tell you the
secret to squaring up a vise. We don't need both bolts. We're gonna take out the right one. With two bolts on the vise, when we tap the vise with
our, with our mallet, it's gonna teeter-totter back and forth, making it hard to indicate in. Now, with only a single bolt on the vise, we have a perfect pivot point from which to rotate about
when indicating the vise. Now, I've jogged my
indicator right in front of the left side of my jaw, the side closest to our pivot point. Once here, I'm gonna jog my
Y-axis up against that jaw until my indicator reads zero. Now, when I placed the vise on the table, I actually make it a little bit crooked. So, I know already that my indicator is gonna stop touching
the vise at some point. Now, at this point, I'm
gonna grab my hammer and tap on the vise. Right. (laughs) This is a dead blow hammer. It's got lead shot in it
to keep it from bouncing, and a soft face so it
won't damage my vise. I'm gonna go ahead and tap on this. As I tap, the vise is rotating
around our pivot point. It's now made contact with the indicator. I'm gonna keep tapping until
my indicator reads zero. And I'm gonna go a little further, maybe five or ten thou. At this point, I'm gonna jog my X-axis back where I started and re-zero the Y-axis until
my indicator reads zero. Now, we'll jog back across the vise. It looks like my vise is still off by a couple thou, so I'll tap it in again. We'll go back where I started, re-zero my indicator, and then check it. My indicator now reads zero across the entire face of that back jaw. At this point, I'm gonna go ahead and snug down this other bolt. And we'll give it one more check before tightening them completely. Now, we set this vise
with only two sweeps. Now, even if it takes you five times going back and forth, it's a method that's gonna work a hundred percent of the time. Okay, our vise is set. But we missed one critical step. We didn't check for clearance. We didn't make sure that our vise wasn't gonna hit the machine around it. Now, there's not much to hit on this VF-3 with a six inch vise. So, we're gonna walk back up front and take a look at
installing a six inch vise on our Toolroom Mill, that doesn't have quite
the amount of clearance. Well, we're back up in
front in our demo room, where I've mounted a six inch vise on our TM-1P. Now, there's three things we
have to check clearance-wise before we can buy off on this set-up. Now, if you want to skip
this step, that's okay. But, then you might want
to go to HaasParts.com, where you can order new way
covers for your machine. This is a really big deal. It's something that we have to check every time we put a vise on the table. On this small machine
with a fairly large vise, the first thing we have to
check is for door clearance. As you can see, this door can hit the vise handle really easily. Even if I push this back, now, to a point where the T-slots
align with the table, I need to jog it all the way back and jog the Z down to make
sure it's gonna clear. We've jogged our Z. Now, I'm gonna jog my
Y-axis all the way back. I'm getting closer than I'd like to. If I just grabbed some half inch bolts and put this vise down, it's
gonna crash into my way covers. So, I'm gonna pull this forward where I've left myself
maybe a quarter inch of clearance in the back. Now, we'll jog it forward again and make sure that we
still clear the doors. Okay. So, this length of a vise can fit in this machine without hitting the way covers or my doors. But, we still have to
check one more thing. The vise is open right now. Let's close this and see how we do. Now, everything looks great still. It looks like we should be fine. Let's jog our Y-axis
back, and see how we do. The nut is sticking out
the back of the vise by about an inch and a half. We only had a quarter
inch of clearance before. The back of the vise,
when the vise is closed, is now gonna go straight
through our Z-axis way cover if we jog this axis all the way back. So, it looks like there's no safe position to mount this particular style of vise on this size machine. If you need a vise for your TM-1P, you know, check out the different brands, look at the specs, make
sure you find one that fits. For a Kurt, that's likely
gonna be a D688 vise. But, even with that vise, you still have to make sure it's mounted in a way where it won't hit
the doors or your way covers. Measure twice, cut once. Or in our case, measure twice or go on HaasParts.com and
order those way covers. That's it. And thanks for watching
this Haas Tip of the Day.
