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Portable (bench-top) Workbench

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Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 08 Mar 2021, 18:10

This project has been on my list for a while now, but I started the main body of work this weekend. The aim is to make a portable (ish) workbench that can be placed on top of my existing bench (or the dining table if necessary!) to give a raised work surface and a couple of different vices that can be used without being constrained to being in one fixed spot on my existing bench.

I've seen a few designs in various places; I might have got carried away with my design and also might have bitten off more than I can chew, but we'll see...

Image

For a sense of scale, the total dimensions of the top surface (including the top of the vice jaws) will be 630 × 380 mm. The vice jaws are 50 mm thick. Including the feet (which stick out for ease of clamping down to another surface), the width is 530 mm. The total height is 166 mm. The dog holes are 20 mm diameter on a 96 mm pitch. The dog holes in the vice jaws will (like the ones on my existing bench) make for easy clamping of thin-ish stuff on the top.

The vice mechanisms will be based on M20 threaded rod; pretty much everything apart from the hand wheels and threaded rod will be made by me from the beech and some bits of brass & steel bar stock. I would have preferred to use M24 threaded rod, but I can get M20 threaded rod locally at a countryside store so I'm going with that for simplicity. I've also got some 30 mm OD, 5 mm wall thickness (and hence 20 mm ID) seamless mild steel tube and that's quite handy for the design given that I'm using 20 mm threaded rod.

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I should probably say at this stage that I'm not even going to try to do this as a hand tools project: this is intended to make it easier to do hand tool based woodworking projects, but I'm going to use every tool I've got to make this! I'm also not planning to include any fancy joinery: just whatever will work and be straightforward. It's going to be fairly hefty and several parts will have bits of brass or steel going through them so there's not much chance of things wandering off. I haven't decided how the rails will be attached to the fixed jaws yet (apart from that they'll go into a cut-out), but it'll probably either be just glue or glue & dowels. The top will be screwed in place (probably with slotted holes in the rails and buttons into slots in the feet) so that it can be removed if required.

I'm making this partly as I think it'll be really useful to have around, but also partly because I think I'll enjoy making it. There's lots of different aspects to this project: machine woodworking (lots of that), some hand tool woodworking, a fair amount of metal turning, a bit of metal milling and some TIG welding. I enjoy all of those things, so from my point of view it should be a good project, regardless of the outcome!

Image

The plan is to have two vices (with home-made quick-release mechanisms). The one at the top of the image above is a conventional vice, with a central screw and two slider bars made of 30 mm OD, 20 mm ID steel tube. Being raised above my normal bench will be handy for cross-cutting stock as the hand saw will have somewhere to go at the bottom of the cut. I'm wondering about adding a dowel into the right-hand side of the fixed jaw of the conventional vice (top-left of the image above) so if I'm a bit over eager with the hand saw at the end of the cut it'll hit the dowel rather than the workbench underneath - the dowel would be easily swapped out once it gets beaten up.

The vice at the bottom of the picture is a dual-screw "Moxon-style" vice with slots in the moving jaw to allow angled clamping. Assuming it works, this should allow me to clamp long workpieces vertically in the vice - up to 200 mm wide. It'll also cope with tapered workpieces thanks to the slotted bushes in the moving jaw.

This picture shows what it would look like with the jaws open:

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This is a view of it with the top surface hidden: note that I've modelled the vice mechanisms as simple white boxes for now; I might update the model once I've made them and know the actual details a bit more accurately.

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Here are a couple of views of the angled vice jaw (at somewhere near the maximum angle that will be possible with the slots as drawn):

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The source material is a 4 metre-ish long piece of beech that was about 150 mm × 50 mm or thereabouts in section (I didn't measure it before cutting it up, but some of the shortened lengths ended up 50 mm thick after planing, so it must have been a bit over that to start with). I cut it up into lengths, planed it (router sled for one side, thicknesser for the other) and measured all the bits that were left. I then updated the CAD model to suit!

I'd planned the top surface of the workbench to be 18 mm thick. I planed the four individual pieces to 18 mm thick, then edge jointed them. I didn't get that quite right and ended up taking another 2 mm off the thickness to get them flat and of a consistent thickness, so the top is now 16 mm thick. I think that should be fine though, the unsupported width (between the two side rails) is only 310 mm.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 08 Mar 2021, 18:11

The first job I did on this (back in January) was to make a prototype of the vice mechanism. The mechanism is based on an idea from a youtube video by Neil Paskin. He didn't provide any dimensions or other details, so I had to work it out for myself (he has also made a plywood version and provided drawings for that, but I wanted to make a metal one). I figured it would be worth testing it out as I was sure it would need some tweaks.

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The photo above shows the prototype assembled. I learned quite a few things doing this - hopefully the next version won't need those washers spacing out the lock parts! The final version won't be held together by M6 threaded rod either; that was just for testing.

Here's another view with the lock piece removed:

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The threaded part of the mechanism is half of an M20 hex nut, with a big block of steel welded to it on each side. The one on the right-hand side of the photo here presses against the plates when tightening (or loosening) and stops the assembly from twisting. It also presses against the round bar you can see in the first photo and limits the clockwise movement of the mechanism (causing the vice to tighten).

The other half of the lock mechanism is made from half of a bit of 30 mm OD, 20 mm ID tube. It's got a hole cut in it for a magnet and two bits of bar welded to it to act as half of a hinge.

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Image

These photos show the lock part on its own. The other block welded to the nut (on the right-hand side of the nut on the last picture) serves two purposes. Firstly it provides the other part of the hinge. Secondly, it presses against the round bar when you turn the mechanism anticlockwise - this causes the nut to lift off the threaded rod, leaving only the tube half engaged (and held on with the magnet).

The result is a vice that you turn half-a-turn anticlockwise and it disengages allowing it to slide in and out freely, but you turn it half-a-turn clockwise and it engages and can be tightened.

Based on a few experiments with the prototype, it seems to work really well and I think it's going to be a lot nicer to use than the separate lever used as a quick release on my Record 52A.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 08 Mar 2021, 18:15

I started by cutting the beech into lengths of roughly double-plus-a-bit what was needed for each component. The "double" was because there's two of each component type, the plus a bit was to try to allow for the snipe of my thicknesser. I didn't quite get that right and there's a little evidence of snipe on the ends of the outside face of the moving jaws, but I'll probably just round those ends off and it'll disappear (it's only about 7 mm into the ends of the pieces).

I then used the table saw to cut a rebate into the fixed jaws. I (deliberately) cut it a bit too shallow so that I could tweak it down to size with my shoulder plane. I then proceeded to drop my shoulder plane on the floor at the end of a stroke:

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That made one or two rude words come out of my mouth...

Thankfully, I also have a Stanley #78, so I was able to use that to sort the rebate out while I wait for Axminster to tell me whether I can buy spare parts or if I'm in the market for a whole new plane. With hindsight, the #78 was the better tool for the job anyway, so I should have reached for that first!

I then did a quick test fit of the jaws and table top:

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Next job was to cut the blind rebate (is that the right word?) for the rail to sit in. I did this by cutting diagonally with a dovetail saw and then sorting the rest out with a chisel:

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The legs were roughly shaped with a mixture of tools: 32 mm Forstner bit for the various radii, then hand saws, jigsaw & finally a saw rasp for a bit of finer shaping. I could then put it all sort-of-together to see how it would look (moving jaws removed for easier clamping in this photo):

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I knife-marked out the slots (in the feet) for the vice mechanisms in both feet and also marked all the hole locations in pencil. Here's the foot that sits at the end with the conventional vice (I didn't take a photo of the other foot in this state) with the central vice mechanism area marked out:

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and here's what the other one looks like after drilling and then removing the wood in the area where the vice mechanisms will sit. Those slots were cut out with a hand saw for the accessible edges and a jigsaw for the inaccessible ones. I then used a chisel to tidy up the sawn edges.

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The way I've designed it, it's really important that the spacing of the three main holes is exactly the same on all four jaws (two fixed and two moving) and in some cases the feet as well. They also need to be perpendicular to the faces and a consistent distance from the top surface. The slide rails for the standard vice need to slide smoothly in the bushes (which will be mounted in holes in the fixed jaw and the foot at the standard vice end). They also need to slide over the threaded rod that forms part of the mechanism for the dual-screw vice. Any inaccuracies in the hole locations will mean the vice mechanism binds up.

Fortunately, I have a milling machine with a digital read out...

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The angle plate you can see on the right gives a consistent reference so that I don't have to re-zero the X-axis every time I place a new part in the vice. If there's a small offset in that axis it won't affect function: it'll just mean the edges don't quite match up. The jaws were all cut in the same setting, so there shouldn't even be an offset, but it's not the end of the world if there is: the important reference is the milling machine vice's fixed jaw, which references the top surface of each part.

Everything looks like it's in the right place so far...

Image

That pretty much brings us up-to-date so far. More to follow.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby novocaine » 08 Mar 2021, 18:58

the planes fecked, seems like a great opportunity to have a go at braising cast steel. :D

bench looks nice.
Carbon fibre is just corduroy for cars.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby SamQ aka Ah! Q! » 08 Mar 2021, 19:00

Fortunately, I have a milling machine with a digital read out...

Image


Aaaaarrrggghh! sawdust on an XY table? Al, what are you doing? :shock:

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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 08 Mar 2021, 19:27

novocaine wrote:the planes fecked, seems like a great opportunity to have a go at braising cast steel. :D


I had wondered about TIG brazing it (I've got some rods of some sort), but it'll be a pig of a job (especially keeping the outside faces flat). Hopefully I can buy that part of the plane on its own: all the other bits seem fine.

SamQ aka Ah! Q! wrote:
Fortunately, I have a milling machine with a digital read out...

Image


Aaaaarrrggghh! sawdust on an XY table? Al, what are you doing? :shock:

sAM


Yeah, I know, but it works & it's only a chinesium milling machine. It gets very thoroughly vacuumed and oiled after each session (although not the vice as I don't want the oil soaking into the wood).
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 08 Mar 2021, 19:39

I made a little bit more progress tonight. I started by drilling out the holes in the foot and fixed jaw for the conventional vice end of the workbench. The fixed jaw was simple: all drilled from one side; three holes drilled through with two opened to a bigger diameter to depth 10 mm. The foot involved a couple of through holes and some other holes for jigsaw access:

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After that, I clamped the foot in the bench vice and sawed down to the holes:

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I was a bit more confident on the second cut and went closer to the knife line:

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I then used the jigsaw to separate the two pieces:

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Then (after sharpening the chisels I used yesterday), I tidied it up:

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Am I the only one who finds end-grain chisel shavings like this extremely satisfying?

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Then a bit of final tidying up of the slot with a saw rasp again (although no-one will ever see these faces) and I called it a day:

Image
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby NickM » 08 Mar 2021, 23:01

This is impressive!

Shame about your shoulder plane :cry:
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby ScaredyCat » 09 Mar 2021, 10:35

Dog hole plugs... ?
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 09 Mar 2021, 10:57

ScaredyCat wrote:Dog hole plugs... ?


What about them?
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby TrimTheKing » 09 Mar 2021, 11:10

Loving watching this mate, keep it coming!
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Cabinetman » 09 Mar 2021, 12:17

Excellent stuff
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby 9fingers » 09 Mar 2021, 12:33

For those curious about the half nut mechanism the related video is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XiMTe0bVBQ
together with a few other intruiging mechanisms to get a similar effect, some requiring no welding.

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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 09 Mar 2021, 12:35

9fingers wrote:For those curious about the half nut mechanism the related video is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XiMTe0bVBQ
together with a few other intruiging mechanisms to get a similar effect, some requiring no welding.

Bob


Thanks Bob: I'd been far too lazy to search for it when I was writing the post!
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby novocaine » 09 Mar 2021, 13:25

Dr.Al wrote:
novocaine wrote:the planes fecked, seems like a great opportunity to have a go at braising cast steel. :D


I had wondered about TIG brazing it (I've got some rods of some sort), but it'll be a pig of a job (especially keeping the outside faces flat). Hopefully I can buy that part of the plane on its own: all the other bits seem fine.



It's already fecked and you can make it any worse.
not to mention you have a dang Mini mill to true it up. :D
Carbon fibre is just corduroy for cars.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 09 Mar 2021, 13:37

novocaine wrote:
Dr.Al wrote:
novocaine wrote:the planes fecked, seems like a great opportunity to have a go at braising cast steel. :D


I had wondered about TIG brazing it (I've got some rods of some sort), but it'll be a pig of a job (especially keeping the outside faces flat). Hopefully I can buy that part of the plane on its own: all the other bits seem fine.



It's already fecked and you can make it any worse.
not to mention you have a dang Mini mill to true it up. :D


Yes, I'll probably have a go. Axminster have replied now and said the only option is to buy a complete replacement. I think I'll keep my eye open for something second-hand, although that's likely to be more expensive than a new one if it's a record one or whatever.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby ScaredyCat » 09 Mar 2021, 20:22

Dr.Al wrote:
ScaredyCat wrote:Dog hole plugs... ?


What about them?


You have many of them
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 09 Mar 2021, 20:33

ScaredyCat wrote:
Dr.Al wrote:
ScaredyCat wrote:Dog hole plugs... ?


What about them?


You have many of them


Yes. I made them out of some bars of 303 stainless I got out of a skip. They stop small screws & suchlike falling into the bin under the bench. They've got M8 tapped holes in (with a screw coming up from underneath to stop *really* small stuff falling through), which makes it easy to get them out and also can be useful for holding stuff.
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 11 Mar 2021, 16:54

Last night I spent some time making a CAD model for the vice mechanism. I'm glad I did as I realised that I hadn't left enough space for the lock piece when it is disengaged. I'd obviously had a brain-dead moment when I was measuring the prototype and only measured it in the locked position. D'Oh!

Anyway, with a lot of playing around and tweaking dimensions, I've got it to the point where I think I can still fit it into the same overall envelope (100 × 80 × 60 mm). I'm going to make the frame out of 80 × 6 mm EN3B mild steel (as it's what I've got), so I didn't want it to be bigger than 80 mm deep. The dimensions of the various lock pieces are sufficiently different that I'm going to make another prototype of the lock piece rather than diving in and making three of them in one go. If it works I can use the new lock piece in one of the final mechanisms; if it doesn't work I won't have wasted as much steel!

The problem with the new design is that the shaft hole had to move up relative to the vice mechanism body, which means the vice mechanism body has to move down relative to the vice jaws. That's not in itself a problem, but it means that there's much less wood underneath the vice mechanism on the foot. At the standard vice end of the workbench, it doesn't matter as that bit of wood isn't doing very much, but at the dual-screw vice end, I was concerned that it might be a bit too thin for the feet to properly support the bench. In reality it might not be a problem as the foot will be glued to the fixed jaw, but to make it a bit stronger on the edges, I decided to add a couple of dowels on either side:

Image

The picture above shows the model of the vice mechanism in the position it will sit when the vice is locked (the view is shown from the outside, with the two jaws of the Moxon vice hidden, so the shaft would be turning clockwise to lock).

The picture below shows what it will look like fully unlocked:

Image

You can see that the overlap between the vice mechanism and the rail is much smaller than it was in the earlier models. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to cut out a bit of the rail (as in the previous design) or cut out a bit of the vice mechanism.

I'm going to finish drilling all the various holes in the bits of beech before I get started on remaking the lock mechanism (so I don't have to change the milling machine set-up), but I won't enlarge the cut-outs for the mechanism until I've tested the new lock mechanism design. One benefit of the new lock design is that all of the parts of the mechanism (apart from the cut-in-half nut and the cut-in-half tube) can be made out of 10 × 16 mm steel bar; the previous version had three different sizes.

Here are a couple of views of the model of the whole workbench (minus the top) updated to include the vice mechanisms:

Image

Image
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 11 Mar 2021, 19:14

I think I've finished all the milling-machine drilling now (and I've given the milling machine a very thorough clean & oil!)

The feet now look like this (top one is the dual-screw end, bottom one is the conventional vice end - and likewise for all the other photos in this post):

Image

I still need to enlarge the cut-outs for the vice mechanism but as mentioned in the previous post that can wait until later.

The inside face of the moving jaws:

Image

The blind holes in the conventional vice jaw are for the slider rails. The small holes at the bottom of the pocket in the dual-screw vice jaw are for dowel pins. They'll make sure the slotted bushes go in with the slot aligned properly. The through holes are currently just 15 mm. Once the (brass) slotted bushes are in place, I'll use a bearing bit in my little router to make the beech hole match the slot in the brass. The bearing on my flush router bit will fit through that hole to get me started.

The outside face of the moving jaws:

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The photo above makes the larger hole in the bottom jaw look really distorted, but that's just a photo artifact: it looks round and concentric to me.

The outside face of the fixed jaws:

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For reasons I can't quite think of right now, I decided to make the screw bushes have a flange on them. It will probably look a bit better (and be easier to glue in place), but it would have been simpler to stick close to the model and just have tubes as I already have tube that would do the job perfectly! Ah well, a bit more turning is not necessarily a bad thing: it is my favourite type of metalwork after all!

The inside jaws. These now have pilot holes for the vice mechanism to mount to. I'd originally intended these to be spaced out further, but with the way the milling machine was set up, there wasn't enough Y-axis travel to get to where the bottom holes were going to be, so I had to move them closer. When I make the vice mechanisms I could add more holes further out: I could then manually spot and pilot drill them. To be honest, I doubt it'll be necessary though so I probably won't bother.

Image

Next job is to make another prototype vice mechanism I think. Once that's done (and assuming it works) I can finish shaping the feet and get started making the myriad of bushes and suchlike
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 12 Mar 2021, 19:36

I work a 4½ day week so after doing a couple of chores I had most of the afternoon to make some more progress. Today was spent mostly on the milling machine. I've been working on the vice mechanisms. I decided to cut all the pieces to (slightly over) length on the bandsaw and then mill stuff to size. When I made the prototype, the only milling I did was the curved face on the bits that are welded to the outside of the half-tube. Everything else was cut with an angle grinder. I figured it would all fit a bit better (with less need for washers!) if I used the mill this time; given I've had to shrink it a bit as described in an earlier post, the tolerances are slightly more critical (although still not very tight at all), so the milling machine helps with that as well.

I'm generally working on the premise that I'll only make one vice mechanism for now (to check it'll work!), but some of the set-ups lend themselves to doing all the parts at the same time, so where that's the case I've done so.

Here are all the parts fresh off the bandsaw: from left to right and top to bottom: the front & back plates of the box, the side plates of the box, the half-tubes on which the threaded rod slides, the half of the hinge that's welded to the nut, the half of the hinge that's welded to the tube, the jam bar that locks the mechanism and the half-nut.

Image

I started by facing the jam bar and nut hinge blocks to length. I didn't bother with the tube hinge blocks at this point as they are more complicated.

Image

Image

The nut hinge blocks (top) are basically finished now. After they've been welded to the nut, I'll drill the hole for the hinge bar, but I don't want to do that yet. The jam bars need a chamfer on the back edge. The chamfer isn't especially critical, so I just marked it up on the end and eyeballed it level in the vice.

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et voila (I've only done one of these so far):

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Next up was a bit of relief that's needed on the nut. Last time this was done after welding, using an angle grinder. This time I thought I'd just mill it off while the nut is free (again only one done so far). The set-up looked like this (the angle was fairly arbitrary, but the angle gauge will mean I can do the others at the same angle if it works):

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... and the result looked like this

Image
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 12 Mar 2021, 19:37

The tube hinge blocks take a bit more work than the other parts. First of all I cut the curved face. It made sense to do all six them at the same time. It didn't take me very long to do as a result of the fact that the last thing I'd used my boring head for was the prototype I made over the Christmas break. As a result the head was already set at exactly the right diameter, which made things very straightforward.

First I mounted a block on the end of the vice (with another block at the other end of the vice to stop the jaws from wandering) and used an edge finder to find the centre of the block (in Y). I moved the Y axis to the centre and locked it.

Image

Then fitted the boring bar and made the cut-out in about 5 passes.

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Image

Image

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I then machined two of these blocks to length and added a chamfer on one corner. I didn't take any photos of that, so you'll just have to imagine it!
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 12 Mar 2021, 19:38

Next up was the half-tube. I mounted this in the milling vice:

Image

and milled a slot in the middle. That took a bit longer than cutting it with an angle grinder, but it's much neater!

Image

Next I mounted it on a single parallel with the parallel going through the new slot, slid the parallel back out and drilled a hole for the magnet:

Image

Image

Here are all the lock mechanism parts together:

Image
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Dr.Al » 12 Mar 2021, 19:41

Last job for the day was sizing the bits that will make up the vice mechanism body. First of all I used the side of an end mill to square up one end of each part (none of these components need to be especially accurate and this is a quick and easy way to do it):

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Then I got a carbide insert face mill (which is wide enough to cut all the bits in one go) and cut the opposite end to length - this ensures the two ends are parallel with one another and that's all that really matters here:

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Action shot (one of the less significant advantages of my home-made X-axis power feed!):

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For the (longer) front and back pieces of the body, I added some extra clamps while face milling to make sure they didn't wobble around:

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That's it for today. Tomorrow I'll drill the holes in the box front and back pieces for one vice mechanism (possibly using a bit of scrap instead of the real bits) and weld the lock mechanism together. If that works it's full steam ahead; if it doesn't work it's back to the drawing board!
My projects website: https://www.cgtk.co.uk
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Dr.Al
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Re: Portable (bench-top) Workbench

Postby Mike G » 12 Mar 2021, 21:28

Some impressive engineering there, Dr Al. I'm still not cear what the bench-top bench thingy is all about, but I'm enjoying its construction.
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Mike G
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