"Dave" wrote in message
om...
I've been pondering the issues of clamping and holding work on a mill
table and I'm really not encouraged. The difficulty in securely
holding the material and yet leaving an empty space around it where
you plan to be cutting it, while still maintaining precise alignment,
seems like a really big headache for any small, thin, or irregularly
shaped (or curved) items. I think I'd need to have a $300 stack of
chopped up parallels and a half-dozen customized sets of vise-jaws to
even begin. Either that or resign myself to adding several unnecessary
threaded holes in each part -- just to hold them down. Am I
exaggerating the difficulty level?

Thanks,

Dave

Hi Dave,
Another way to hold stuff is to make an extra table, from 1
inch thick plate. You can drill and tap holes in it to secure pieces. Also,
drill and ream holes for ground pins for alignment. So, say you need to mill
a rectangular workpiece on all edges, you set it against some pins and clamp
it down so it hangs just off the corner of the plate. Mill the exposed to
edges, then turn the work piece around so the other two edges are hanging
off the table and mill those, the pins keep everything square. If you bolt
some tangs to the underside and mill them accurately to the width of your
main table slots, and mill around the edge of the extra table while you are
at it, it will self align on the main table.

regards,

John