Cutting Edge Engineering Australia

Making Chain Clamp Vices for the Zayer Milling Machine | Shop Made Tools

Machining setups can eat up a LOT of time. So we made our own solution... a set of heavy duty chain clamp vices 🛠️ Built to speed up repairs, tidy up our setups and save serious time, especially when we've got multiple jobs on the go. Starting with laser cut plates, scrap material, triple row chain and a bag of hardware, there’s plenty of machining ahead before these vices are ready for work. Things get interesting early on when we discover the scrap material is induction hardened 😅 Not a major setback, but definitely something that needs careful machining to avoid damaging tooling. We begin on the lathe machining the components that make the system work. Tensioning pins are machined from solid bar complete with drilling, tapping and threaded features, bolts are modified into adjustable chain tensioners and some old brass hex bar is turned down into support washers. With the turning work complete, attention shifts to the milling machine where the remaining machining starts bringing the design together. Pockets are machined into the pins to capture the support washers, while the top plates are drilled and tapped to support the adjustment hardware and hold everything in position. Only once every component is machined and checked can the first assemblies begin to take shape. The vices are pre assembled, tacked together and prepared for final welding before moving into final fit up and assembly. The real test comes when everything is bolted onto the Zayer mill to see whether the system performs the way we hoped. Safe to say… these might end up being some of the handiest shop tools we've built yet. 📐 Full drawings and DXF files for these Chain Clamp Vices are available in our Patreon community: 🔗 https://www.patreon.com/cuttingedgeengineering ═══════════════ New videos every second Friday at 5pm AEST! If you enjoy the video, hit LIKE & SUBSCRIBE 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@CuttingEdgeEngineering?sub_confirmation=1 ❤ PATREON (early access & ad-free videos): https://www.patreon.com/cuttingedgeengineering 🧢 OFFICIAL CEE MERCH: https://www.ceeshop.com.au 🛒 OUR AMAZON STORE (workshop favourites): https://www.amazon.com/shop/cuttingedgeengineeringaustralia (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) FOLLOW US 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cutting_edge_engineering 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cutting_edge_engineering 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cuttingedgeengineeringaustralia ABOUT US We're a down-to-earth, real-life machining and fabrication workshop on the Gold Coast, Australia. We specialise in helping mining and earthmoving businesses keep their machines running smoothly, and we love working on broken parts, the bigger the better! As well as our customer repair work, we also share the big workshop projects, restorations and custom shop-made tools we get stuck into, like the Franna crane project and our heavy duty parts washer build. New video every second Friday. Subscribe to follow along. #australianmachinist #machineshop #machinist