"Michael Koblic" wrote in message
...
The new vise arrived today. Eagerly I clamped it to the table and had at
it with my indicator (NB - *not* a test indicator). After much effort I
got it down to 2/1000" in 2" which is not great but I could not seem to do
better. Anyway, for the job in mind I was not too concerned.

The work went swimmingly: It involved drilling three holes down the center
of a 2.5" piece of a 7/16" key stock. I laid out the centres just to be
sure and used a centre finder on the first one - center drilled, drilled,
repeat three times by moving the Y-axis with the X-axis locked.

To my surprise the holes came out on a diagonal. Very slight but
noticeable to a naked eye and confirmed by measurement - and not a subtle
0.002" either!

The only reason I can think of is that I screwed up the vise alignment
(duh!) but why? Is it because the indicator is attached to the spindle in
a drill chuck and the spindle has a freedom to move with every adjustment
to the vise I make? I have seen this procedure on two videos and unless I
am missing something everyone does it this way, i.e. indicator in a chuck.

Maybe I should repeat with the indicator on a mag base somewhere
independent of the spindle? What do you guys do?

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC


Unless you have a spindle lock, use the mag base and attach it to the head.
If the spindle rotates at all, you've wasted your time.