No one has resurrected a 4 year old thread in a couple hours,, so I figured I would put one on life support,,
I never had much in the way of a typical "bench" vise,, but, I have some vises that are "doozies",,
The one in these pics was a real lifesaver on my CNC torch,,
Rather than cut sheet material, I CNC torch cut bar stock, typically lengths cut in half, so about 10 feet to 12 feet long was the raw material.
When I wanted to cut sheet steel, I had the supplier cut the sheet to the width of the part, and I fed that just like bar stock, typically 10 to 12 feet long.
The width was identical, or close to what the dimensions of the part was to be,,
Anything from 2" wide to 15" wide,, I needed a way to hold the material.
This vise did the trick. with a capacity of 0 to 16",, with 10" wide jaws, and the movable jaw is fast acting,, the handle was gone, I made one out of an import wrench.
(That wrench is "over-size", it will slide from nut to nut, but, still turn the nut without slipping)
The bar stock rolled on the rollers, . Repeatability was necessary because most parts used the mill edge as integral to the torch cut part.
This vise held the material the same, part after part, as long as you wanted to keep feeding the bars.
Some days I would cut several tons of parts. Slide a bar off the forks of the forklift, hit the stop , cut the part.
Usually the biggest effort was to catch the cut part.
Actually, I have a second one of these vises,, I did not know if the machine was gonna need two vises, so I bought both of the used vises.
