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by Sim Tong
20 October 2011
I was faced with an unexpected conundrum today. I had to clamp a steel rod that had a bigger diameter on one end and needed it to stick out of the vise on the other end. The rod was too short for the bigger diameter part to stick out the far side of the vise.
| I didn't want to make an elaborate set of vise jaws for this one-off job, so I came up with an aluminium sleeve to space out and fatten up the middle diameter. It had a C-shaped cross section. The inner diameter was a snug fit against the outer diameter of the work. |
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The sleeve sat straight against the v-groove of my vise. As the vise clamped the sleeve, the sleeve clamped the rod. I was not sure if it would be rigid enough for milling, but I had a spare rod of the same diameter and material to test on. In the end, it proved to be rigid enough and everything worked out great.
Lessons learnt:
1. Test pieces are awesome