Our steel milling machine has a lot of potential, but without a vise it's hard to make the most of it. But help has arrived – ALLMATIC-Jakob Spannsysteme GmbH was generous enough to donate a fully equipped TITAN 2 M to us!
With the reversible step jaws, both small parts and large plates are securely clamped.
So we went ahead and milled two soft jaws from aluminum offcuts to be able to hold round stock as well. First a full-width slot through the center with a 16mm solid carbide end mill, and finally chamfering the resulting edges with a 16mm HSS 45° chamfer cutter:
As a first project, a plate of AW-7075 aluminum was face-milled and then bearing seats were bored out:
For tasks that need to be repeated multiple times without having to re-measure each time: side stops can be positioned anywhere using the threaded holes! Here as an example, parts for our custom-built belt grinder and its Y-table – the width of the plates could be milled repeatably.
But many more projects are on the horizon!