Machine shop locks; Mill vise

Someone put the wrong locks back on the wrong cabinets. The regular mill cabinet lock was on the CNC mill tools, and another lock was on the manual mill cabinet – and I don’t know that combination. I spent another couple hours awkwardly working around the plastic door to pull out tools. Can someone either put the locks back in the right places or at least just tell us the other combinations?
.
.
The vise on the manual mill was off kilter by several degrees. When I ran an indicator over it, the hand spun like the clock hands in a “time passes” montage in an old movie. Did someone move it without indicating it when they put it back? Or did something else just throw it out of whack?

I didn’t notice until I saw that the holes in my part were skewed well off the center line – a hundred thousandths off over three inches! Fortunately, this part was a jig and all I needed was colinear holes and accurate distances between them, so it’s fine. Otherwise, this would have ruined the piece.

Since it needed re-indicating anyway, I took the opportunity to re-center the vise as Eric and I discussed recently. I think I got it aligned to within about a thousandth over the width of the back plate of the vise, but someone should probably double check that.

1 Like

That’s annoying, sorry that happened :expressionless:

Tagging @EricP to make sure he sees

1 Like

We should probably put a big “CHECK YOUR VISE!” sign on the mill. It gets moved all the time, and whoever used the machine before you might not have cared as much about precision as you do.

1 Like

I’ve used it a number of over several months without issue, and it didn’t appear to have been moved. Because it had been so stable for so long, I fell into the assumption that that was expected. I guess that’s the question: is it expected that mill users will restore the vise alignment if moved or at least make it clear that they haven’t done so? I had assumed so, but perhaps that isn’t realistic in a shared shop.

And of course that doesn’t help if something else happens to throw it off. Which is what I was wondering: someone else might not care if its five or even ten thousandths off over the width, but no one would set it 200+ thousandths off.

(Note that I was more reporting about the vise situation than complaining, but perhaps my tone from the lock complaint carried over to the rest of the post.)

2 Likes

I definitely agree that it’s poor shop etiquette to leave the vise almost trammed. If it’s eyeball-square, it’s totally foreseeable that somebody might not examine it carefully.

If we say “always tram the vise when you’re done” then we wind up with the newbs getting ragged at for not tramming the vise to the precision that another user expected. We don’t want to foster a haze-the-new-guy environment.

1 Like

I’m not a regular user of the mill, but I think it’s a solid general principle it’s the responsibility of the user to make sure their equipment is square before using it. That’s the nature of a communal space. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t do their best to leave things as they found them, but if we say “always tram the vise when you’re done” then we might as well make it the other way around and say “always tram the vise before you start”

Your precision is always gonna be as bad as the weakest link, and in this case that would be the previous user no matter what the rule is

Anyway, lesson learned I guess, at least it wasn’t a crucial dimension! I wasn’t even aware there was more than one locked cabinet in the machine shop

1 Like

I believe it is absolutely the previous users’ responsibility to leave things in the proper confirmation after use. The next user is wise to check. I might be quibbling with the definition of responsibility.

I think “leave it in the proper configuration” should be stressed during orientation, on Discourd, and during classes.

1 Like

That’s a fair position too. I suppose I was mainly emphasizing the ‘wise to check’ part. Some users of the mill are inexperienced, or have different definitions of acceptable tolerance.

1 Like

At least in my milling class we were instructed to never assume the vise was trammed, but to double check things every time. Too many new people coming in and out and messing around with things (not to mention classes where the instructor is trying to demonstrate things, like moving around the vise in a compressed timeframe) to realistically assume otherwise.

On the locks: Maybe we could get cheap tags for them so we know which lock goes where? Seems like a cheap and easy solution if it’s a big problem.

1 Like

I’d be leery of expecting the previous user to leave it set up right - just because I tried to set it square doesn’t mean I used the gage correctly/tightened things evenly/remembered every step. Even if I did, my square may not be good enough for whatever you’re doing.

I spent a few years in precision machining, and you learn a lot when nothing can be eyeballed and holding a part in your hand for 60s will throw it out of tolerance. If you need precision, best to assume everything that can easily be adjusted has been, that there are chips under the fixture/vice, etc etc.

1 Like

Why do we have two different lock combos for the equipment? could we put them to the same combo? I get why we have the locks on those (Don’t play with the mill without training). But my manual mill class gave me the combo to both locks. I just know not to mess with the gear I don’t have training on.

1 Like

Sure, yah not much thought was put into that. I will change them both to be the manual mill toolbox combo. Will send out an email to all people that are trained when I do.

1 Like

On the vise, yah it is never wise to assume it is correct.
Typically, it is courteous to re-tram the vise if you do anything where it needs to be moved.
Here is the very to the point video I use as reference for vise tramming
Indicate the vise on a milling machine in just one pass - YouTube

1 Like