Finally Documented my Devon Sea Clock modifications
Following on from a number of enquiries I have updated my notes on the modifications I made to my Devon Sea Clock. This includes creation of a new set of pallets and also set up notes. A link is provided to download the details.
My Devon Sea Clock as featured in these notes
I hope you find this useful and it allows a few more clocks to begin ticking reliably.
The link will download a ZIP file with the written notes and 2D drawings of the components.
There are a number of lower cost CNC milling vices (vises) available on the market that do not have jaw geometry with grooves for tooling fixtures and vice stops. Admittedly their jaws could be machined to add this facility but many of these vices have hardened jaws which presents more of a problem.
My CNC vice came from the UK supplier ARCeurotrade and is from their ARC Versatile SG Iron Milling Vices range. I have the 100mm wide jaw version and the jaws are just over 11mm (7/16″) thick.
I have a simple plate that acts as a stop that is flush with the end of the jaws. This makes use of existing holes in the vice body but often I need to have a stop internal to the jaw footprint. Juggling then results with all manner of Heath Robinson solutions.
My design is simple and clamps onto the thickness of the jaws.
There are two M3 clamping screws and there is enough adjustment on these to allow a parallel to also be gripped should it be needed.
CNC vice stop showing clamping onto the vice jaw and also when used with a parallel
I allowed for two positions for the stop rod and the rod is held with a grub screw in each. There is a central burr clearance neck on the rod so the grub screw does not damage the surface of the rod and make removal difficult. Clearly the rod could be simplified to have just a single fixed position.
The rod can have rounded ends or it can have ball bearings glued into a cavity on each end of the rod. The ball bearings would give a higher resilience to damage.
So nothing really complicated or rocket science with just an hour or so of workshop pleasure. The size can be adjusted to suit your vice jaws and the material can be whatever is in the junk box.
Here is a link to the 2D drawings that were created in Fusion 360.
Bondie Hacks is a YouTube site that I have on my YouTube listing and a recent video featured Quinn building a Kant clamp from a kit. Needing some lockdown distraction I decided that I would attempt to build a clamp from scratch. Searching on Google revealed a plethora of drawings and from these I distilled a plan of action.
I created a Fusion 360 assembly for my hybrid version. The clamp was made with 3mm steel side plates and the other fittings from various diameters of silver steel. From the Fusion drawings I created two CAM programs to profile the side plates and the other fittings were all straightforward lathe work with the exception of the gripping blocks. I made these in aluminium which I ran freehand on my manual mill. If the clamp is to be used for welding then it is traditional to make the clamps and the screw from copper.
I opted to fasten the side plates with screws and washers but the pillars could have been peened in place. This would have made replacement of the gripping jaws difficult however so screws seemed like a better option.
The result turned out very well and I was pleased that I had made the effort.
Stylised Fusion 360 model of my Kant clamp
I have produced engineering drawings on Fusion previously but all were a bit ad hoc. Fusion is capable of automating the process of creating drawings for each component but I had never got to grips with it. Having created the clamp I decided it was a good excuse to dig deeper into the drawing process.
There are various YouTube videos on creating Fusion engineering drawings but the one that helped the most was by Bryce at Autodesk. The key to the automation process is creating Templates. This is really worth watching if you are debating moving up a level with the quality of your engineering drawings.
The video goes into detail on how to create a customised set of drawing sheet blanks with customised title blocks. Having watched this a couple of times the mists began to clear.
The result of my labours is the complete drawing set for my Kant clamp in the following pdf file. Feel free to download and build your own.
