[LeeWay]

More thought on the issue.
Don't know what size of component he is machining but if one could and did go to a double vise set up and machine two at a time (really as many as possible) this would essentially be the same as halving tool change times.

Ken

I thought about this last night. I priced a new double vise in a few places. I buy mid quality vises. My products are perfectly fine with that repeatability and accuracy. I could buy an identical vise to what I have cheaper. It's a nice little vise from Shars. 4" size. I like it a lot and use Monster jaws in it. I am working on using a third jaw in between two parts. Not sure if I will need to mill a key to bolt under the center jaw to keep it semi in place. Now my jaws do not lift with only two, but the test will be to see if the third center jaw lifts when two raw parts are clamped down. Won't cost anything but half a set of jaws to find out.
That will give me two parts per tool change routine rather than one. It should save some time.

[WOTDesigns]

I'm perfectly happy with my crappy 4 inch double vises from shars. I use them for production work and they serve my needs.

I cut almost an inch off to get them to fit the Tormach Y travel. The 4" soft jaws from monster fit like a champ.

Now that I'll be using them on the HAAS I'll be buying a few more at around $250 each they aren't bad at all.

Attachment 265892
Attachment 265894

Brian
WOT Designs

[Ken_Shea]

Then there is the fixture plate which can out do vices at times once set up, there is just no one method fits all here, you gotta hunt for the max efficiency, it ain't coming to you.
There are many ways to skin a cat as is said, always hated that saying because I really like cats apart from the times I want to wring their dang necks but it does seem to fit

[LeeWay]

I would probably have to cut down a double vise as well. I have a big bandsaw though, so not a big deal. My issue would be that I use Monster soft jaws and mill a step in them to hold my parts. When the jaw gets buggered up overnight which happens a lot, I machine them down past the step again and repeat the step milling. Gremlins in the shop? The jaws are an inch each. My widest parts are 1.5" each. That is a lot of real estate on a small mill. Luckily though I only need very few of the 1.5" wide stuff. My numerous parts are 1" and 1.25" wide. Those should fit a little more comfortably.
I will let you guys know in a couple days how the center jaw dual part holding works out.

[LeeWay]

I was able to give this a try today. As I had hoped, the center jaw does not lift in my vise when everything is clamped in place.
It has to be close to half the time for two parts. Well worth it. Now I can buy another little vise like it and machine 4 parts at one go. Not sure why I didn't consider doing that before. I had only thought about buying a new double vise instead.

I thought of something else that can be done with this for guys who's vise jaws do lift.
You can design the bottom part of the jaw so that it twist locks into place much like Unistruts nuts are inserted. With two rounded corners. Then it would be held down and centered when installed.

[shred]

I'd be willing to bet that they are just using a macro to control the rapid speed all of which were able to be modified via windows browser in the mach/tormach file. For example the delay after spindle on was irritatingly slow since I always start more than 3 inches above the part which is plenty of time to get the spindle up to speed without sitting still first. I just found the "m3" macro and changed the delay time per 1000rpm to a lower number.

I'll bet the A T C Macro can be adjusted as well.

Brian
WOT Designs

Hmm... my Post throws in a machine coordinate rapid move to approximately the ATC change location before calling for the change. Always has for tool changing reasons, even before I got the ATC. It doesn't seem to move any faster or slower than a rapid on the way back down but it might be worth a try if the up move is slow out of the box.

[philbur]

how many parts does it take to recoup the huge price difference?

It's not the number of parts that recoups the cost it's the number of man-hours available to perform other productive activities.

Phil

[treyjugson]

It's not the number of parts that recoups the cost it's the number of man-hours available to perform other productive activities.

Phil

i was asking jid2 how many parts it takes to recoup the cost difference between a tormach and vmc like his brother, it's got nothing to do with man hours to do things while the atc handles tool changes vs manually changing tools.

[WOTDesigns]

The rapid move is S M R T if the built in speed really is slower

Brian
WOT Designs

[jid2]

i was asking jid2 how many parts it takes to recoup the cost difference between a tormach and vmc like his brother

It depends of course. Each person has to do the math for their situation, for me it's in the hundreds of parts, not the thousands.

[keen]

It's not the number of parts that recoups the cost it's the number of man-hours available to perform other productive activities.

Phil

I agree again! I have been thinking this while running a job that I know is an inefficient programme and I could cut the machining time in half....but it doesn't matter as the long run time allows me enough time to run another machine and cut/machine/prep the stock etc. The Tormach just sits there until I have made the stock etc anyway. Of course this situation varies from job to job. For my toolmaking work machining time doesn't really matter either though as it is a one off 'part' and most of the time is spent in design, programming and set up. keen.