Vise Squad

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SteveHGraham
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Vise Squad

Post by SteveHGraham »

A while back, I posted something about bench vises, and there was a lot of discussion. I mentioned Yost's new ductile iron vises, which, though Chinese, are supposed to be incredibly strong.

The guy from Fireball Tool just put up a video in which he wrecked a dozen vises, including a Yost ADI-5 (the vise I was interested in), a Heuer, an old Prentiss, and a big vise he made in his shop from steel.

It's worth watching.

Some things I took away:

1. Irwin's cheap Chinese vise that swivels on two axes is not bad at all unless you plan to abuse it severely. It gave out at 10000 pounds. For $100, it's a bargain. It's extremely versatile.

2. The Yost vise truly is strong. It's not hype. Unfortunately, the swivel base is not as tough as the vise itself, so if I bought one, I might want to make my own base. With the money I would save over a Wilton, I could pay for the steel for the base many times over. It clamped to well over 16000 pounds, but based on the video, you only get 10000 before it flexes noticeably. You can get this vise for under $220.

3. The Prentiss (which had a jaw welded back on) clamped down to a force of almost 16000 pounds before the nut broke. It did not distort visibly, and it appeared afterward that with a new nut, the vise would be as good as new. The Yost clamped to a higher pressure, but it eventually distorted, so the Prentiss was very impressive. An old 5" Prentiss with a homemade swivel base would be a great vise. Whoever welded the jaw back on the Prentiss did a beautiful job.

4. The pricey Heuer vise did well, but not so well the cost is justified. It bent badly at 10000 pounds. The Yost is a much better vise, for a lot less money, IF you can make a base. I wouldn't buy a Heuer after seeing this test. Where is all the money going? Certainly not into rigidity.

5. He tested a Wilton Tradesman, which is supposedly made from 60000-psi iron. It stopped increasing force at around 10000 pounds, indicating the metal was giving way. Then it snapped suddenly. The screw broke. The vise is stronger than the screw. Whether this is by design or not, I don't know, but it looks like it will allow you to rebuild your Wilton easily after you break it. Anyhow, it's clearly not the super-vise people think it is.

6. The homemade vise is so much better than the rest, it's on a different planet. Clamped to 40000 pounds, and all he damaged were some easily replaced parts. Not a hard project, either.

Before I saw this, I had seen a bunch of homemade vises, and I had assumed they must be junk, because why would Wilton charge $1500 for something you can make in an afternoon from scrap metal? I was completely wrong. Steel is apparently better than cast metal for vises. Welding is better than casting. There is no reason why you can't make your own vise, cheap, and produce something far superior to a vise costing four figures. It makes me wonder why no one is undercutting the expensive manufacturers.

The homemade vise uses cheap all-thread instead of Acme thread, and the threads were not damaged. He used all-thread because it was cheap. That was a surprise.

[googlevideo]VcbTopj5u7A[/googlevideo]
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liveaboard
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by liveaboard »

That's interesting;
I sometimes think the high cost of heavy things is largely because they're heavy. High shipping and stocking costs; also slow selling. I can't remember ever seeing a new premium quality vise; lots of old ones though.
I only have one because I got it without paying for it.
DIY vise ideas; let's see them!

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John Hasler
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by John Hasler »

A screw or nut that fails before the elastic limit of the jaws is reached is a feature, not a bug, but other than that I don't really see that the ultimate failure mode of a vise when it is abused is relevant. How much it flexes at rated load and how much play there is in the moving jaw seems much more important.

You can bend a steel vise so that the damage is not obvious but it will never again work quite right. Can't do that with cast iron. Sure, the yield strength of the steel is higher. So what? The amount of material required to avoid excessive flexing is such that neither material will come close to cracking or yielding plastically at rated load.
pete
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by pete »

100% agree John, I don't knowingly abuse any tools I own. My 5" Record bench vise made before they went off shore has held everything I've needed to hold or press parts together without noticeable flexing, breaking a single part of it or bending the handle. It's more than strong enough for it's size. A bit bigger would have been nice but those were a massive jump in price. Both mines I worked at used 8" Records, if any industry is hard on bench vises then heavy duty mechanics and open pit mining is, yet I never even saw a bent handle on those. For any decent bench vise I've used if your breaking or bending parts of it your really doing something wrong. My first cheap Chinese vise I broke the nut at far less pressure than it should have broken, but that was because low quality cast iron was used instead of bronze. Most non industrial work in a home shop is pretty light duty. I find I use my Record under mount wood working vise for metal work as much or more than my bench vise. And it opens to over 8". If I really needed a good large bench vise there's 100's of very good condition used for sale for lot's less than $500 like the Reeds. Years ago I ran across an obviously too much money yuppie manufacturer that somehow got the rights to use the Bugatti name on there vises,https://simanaitissays.com/2016/10/16/b ... and-vices/ If I recall correctly I think there were or are priced at over $10k. Just the thing for holding your tins of caviar.:-) For that money I could carve one 10 times better out of solid titanium. No one ever said the ultra rich are very smart about tools I guess.
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by Steggy »

He tested a Wilton Tradesman, which is supposedly made from 60000-psi iron. It stopped increasing force at around 10000 pounds, indicating the metal was giving way. Then it snapped suddenly. The screw broke. The vise is stronger than the screw.
The Wilton Tradesman is not as substantial as their Machinist's series, but is still a quality vise (and American-made). The failure of the screw due to overload is likely an intentional design feature that protects the expensive castings at the expense of the relatively inexpensive screw.

In almost all cases in the video, the vises failed due to gross misuse, not inferior design or materials. I fail to see a lot of value in this "test." Mostly what it demonstrates is some vises are better at tolerating severe abuse than others.

Incidentally, I have a Craftsman six inch vise I bought in 1976, along with a set of soft jaws. This vise is in use to this day, despite having used a "persuader" a number of times to multiply clamping force. I hardly ever remove the soft jaws, even when welding. I guess I got my money's worth from it. :D
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by SteveHGraham »

Not sure everyone watched the entire video. He put a steel bar in the vises and whacked it with a hammer. This showed how the vises reacted to torque. Some were very solid, and some weren't. He also checked them from time to time during testing.

As for the sheared screw being a feature, I referred to that, above. But it sheared at only 10000 pounds of force, which makes Wilton's claim of superior iron deceptive. If the screw can't put real pressure on the vise, the quality of the iron doesn't help it. The Yost is EXPECTED to be used at nearly the pressure at which the Wilton gave out, every day. If the base were improved a little, it would be a remarkable tool for the.money.

A really strong vise doesn't need a screw that breaks at a lower level of force than the competition. The handicapped Prentiss, which had already been welded once, could be used routinely at a level of pressure that broke the Wilton.

"Abuse" for the Wilton is normal, acceptable use for the Yost and Prentiss, and the Yost is a $200 vise.

As for steel bending instead of breaking, that doesn't matter if the cast iron snaps before the steel bends. Steel is obviously a better vise material. You can make a lighter vise which applies more pressure and holds better without damage. Some people think a vise has to be heavy to work well, but a stationary tool is effectively as heavy as whatever its bolted to, so that's wrong.

Another point: you can straighten bent steel, and machining and welding new parts is not hard. Not many of us can cast a trustworthy vise jaw.

The shopmade steel vise is amazing. Nothing else approached its performance, and it was made from scrap plus a bearing, a few nuts, and some all-thread. Now that I've seen what's possible, I no longer have any interest in manufactured vises.
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Harold_V
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by Harold_V »

Hmmm. I'd be interested in viewing the video, but I see no way to do so. On my monitor, all I see is the following

Code: Select all

[googlevideo]VcbTopj5u7A[/googlevideo]
What am I missing?

H

Edit:

Ok, did a search on Youtube and found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcbTopj5u7A
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by SteveHGraham »

I used the forum's Google link feature, and it didn't work.

Here's something interesting: in another thread, someone is telling me to get rid of my Harbor Freight hydraulic press arbor plates because he thinks they're cast iron, which is not safe in high-stress tensile applications because it snaps. In this thread, someone is defending cast iron in a high-stress tensile application. Hmm.

I see brittle failure as a bad thing. Maybe I'm wrong.

If Wilton designed its weak screw to snap before the vise's jaws, it must have been to prevent catastrophic brittle failure, which would destroy the vise totally or at least largely and perhaps injure the user. They knew their vises would snap violently instead of giving gently. The steel vises won't fail that way, and if they bend, the bent parts can be straightened OR the user can buy or machine new mobile jaws.

It's interesting that the $200 5" Yost, which is ductile iron, not steel, managed to bend and recover instead of breaking. I didn't think that was possible, but then I don't know much about ductile iron. I always thought ductile iron, for practical purposes, behaved like ordinary cast iron, except that it was stronger.

After the screw broke, all it needed was a new screw.

I think if you spent $400 instead of $200 and got a 7" Yost, you would probably have a very light, incredibly strong vise. You would also get a very wide jaw plus an enormous jaw opening.

The part of the Yost's base that broke was an easily made piece of metal. The original was iron, but making a steel one would only take 20 minutes.
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BadDog
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by BadDog »

To be fair, I didn't "think they are cast iron", they were cast iron, and as you enlightened me, they no longer are.

{Not an engineer, so talking above my pay grade, but this is what I think I understand}
That said, I don't think it's the same thing. Vise bodies are relatively consistent in design across most manufacturers because they are designed (engineered) to convert most stresses into compression, which CI generally (generalizing) handles quite nicely. What it doesn't handle well at all is tensile stress, and better but still not great, shear stress. And those old CI HF press plates were subjected to both in a big way. Not only were they subjected to tons of localized pressure (psi) unsupported across the support beam gap, but they were not machined flat (nor was the beam), so they mostly just sat/rocked on a handful of contact points at that.

I wasn't party to it, but I recall folks stating that still other folks had been injured and or damaged parts by broken HF CI plates. Total hearsay at best on my part, but it rang true enough that I ditched the CI plates and made a crude set from 1" steel for my 20T HF press (along with other upgrades). As far as I know, the local guy I sold it to is still using it just as I sold it to him some 10(?) years later...

Back to vises, like most other things, particularly in the last 30 years or so, they are built to the minimum cost/material/time/weight/etc to meet requirements. So much older vises like Athol, Prentice, etc were brutally heavy beasts with HUGE failure margins. More modern are as with most things, absolute minimalists, likely with design lifetimes. I also suspect that for consistent commercial results, castings may likely win our over steel weldments, but that's a guess which, if true, would also support minimum investment commercial goals. But now I'm rambling...
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Harold_V
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by Harold_V »

SteveHGraham wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:21 am I always thought ductile iron, for practical purposes, behaved like ordinary cast iron, except that it was stronger.
The difference between ductile and gray are in the name. Ductile is generally the same material as gray, but like the name says, it's ductile, which means it has the ability to deform without breaking. Cast iron lacks that property entirely.

It is thought that gray iron develops flakes of graphite as it solidifies, which interrupt the slip plane (no ductility), while ductile iron develops spheres instead. The net result is increased tensile strength, and ductility.

In order for gray iron to be converted to ductile iron, it must have low sulfur content. Converting typically occurs in the ladle, where magnesium is added (Glomag, as an example) to the already molten metal. Chemically, they are often identical otherwise.

Note that there's a narrow window of opportunity for the resulting material to be ductile. Note also that should ductile iron be remelted, it would yield gray iron unless it was inoculated again, prior to pouring.

H
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by SteveHGraham »

BadDog wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2019 1:58 pm To be fair, I didn't "think they are cast iron", they were cast iron, and as you enlightened me, they no longer are.
What you said about the plates was absolutely true. I just didn't feel like working hard enough to summarize the whole thing accurately here.
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warmstrong1955
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Re: Vise Squad

Post by warmstrong1955 »

That guy doesn't seem to like vises.... ;)

I have a couple of Horror Freights, and a Milwaukee. All cheap, but all work for what I need here at home.
I have used the 6" HF, to rebuild a couple kazillion hydraulic cylinders, and a lot of other stuff besides.
Malleable....the anvil is soft....but they hold stuff.

Now....would cheapies work in an industrial setting?
Not long.
I bought a couple Jet vises, before they merged with Wilton, and the 'children'....destroyed them both in a few months.
I am smart enough to know if I put a 6-foot cheater on one of my cheap vises....it will be vise parts. So I don't do that....and actually....haven't had reason to do that.

:)
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