chick system 5

[Robert Ouellette]

anyone know where or if there is a cutter available to cut the pocket details on the new style chick vise jaws? we just got 7 1040 vises and now the boss wants to save some money by making our own jaws. but they changed the design from the last time I used chick vises and now I have no clue where to go or what to do. or does anyone know where we could buy no name jaws for them for cheaper than chick? I am really hoping there is a cutter available for making our own.

[Brando]

if you can spare one saw a jaw in half and inspect it on a cmm or optical comparitor (i guess if you have acess to either of those two), and draw the side profile needed and get a cutter made, if you want the place i use to get cutters like this made lmk, but i doubt chick will sell you the cutter and havent seen any places that sell them either , i also have the system 5, and may have a file of the cutter profile already im pretty sure me an another programmer were talking about doing the very same thing but we ended up using the vises on a long term job and just purchased the jaws to save time , but ill check 2m if i have the profile of a cutter

[mkd]

i'm interested in that info also.

i guess molding compound and a comparator will give you the radius.

i don't have a comparator.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Maybe they changed it to make it harder to replicate. I've seen that before.

[Guest]

Reallly you don't save much. By the time you order the right material, saw up the material, set it up, machine it, you've saved a few pennies. It's not like the old kurt jaws where it's a 5 minute part. Those things are pretty complicated and you'll need to hold CLOSE tolerances if you want to maintain the same repeatability.

 

JM2C

[Joe788]

Reallly you don't save much. By the time you order the right material, saw up the material, set it up, machine it, you've saved a few pennies. It's not like the old kurt jaws where it's a 5 minute part. Those things are pretty complicated and you'll need to hold CLOSE tolerances if you want to maintain the same repeatability.

 

JM2C

 

It depends on how many you need. But the store bought set is over $200, and the material to make them yourself is only $20. So you have to treat it like any other job and weigh the costs of setup, production, etc. If you use 100 sets per year, you'll come out way ahead making them yourself, even if it means shutting down for a whole week to reverse engineer and spit out 100 sets. If you only use 5 sets per year, it's probably better to just buy em'. The cycle time to machine them one at a time is only 3-4 minutes. The outer jaws are single operation, the center jaw is two ops.

[Joe788]

anyone know where or if there is a cutter available to cut the pocket details on the new style chick vise jaws? we just got 7 1040 vises and now the boss wants to save some money by making our own jaws. but they changed the design from the last time I used chick vises and now I have no clue where to go or what to do. or does anyone know where we could buy no name jaws for them for cheaper than chick? I am really hoping there is a cutter available for making our own.

 

The radius at the root of the clamping surface doesn't do anything, it's just clearance. I had AB Tools make me a dovetail tool like 8 years ago to do them. I'm pretty sure it's 40 degrees. It took a little bit of trial and error to get the dovetailed surface just right, but nothing more than a couple of hours farting around.

[Robert Ouellette]

ok thanks guys. I will look at getting a cutter made and reverse engineer the ones I have. the boss is leaning that way for cost and so was I when I saw the cost of replacement jaws.

[Brando]

negative on having the cutter profile

[rx8pilot]

I took a blank set of jaws and designed "carriers" out of them that I bolt special (but very simple) soft jaws to them. It eliminated the challenge of re-creating the the special Chick geometry. Now I use these vises for production and prototyping without the huge cost of the jaws. I have 3 of the vises that sat around for a very long time until I figured this little trick, now they are in daily use.