I am awaiting the delivery of a PM-833TV that I will be converting to CNC. The manual suggests using a 4" vise. First questions, does anyone feel that a 5" or 6" would be a better fit? Second question, I have been looking at Glacern Machine Tools vise selections, has anyone had experience with these or other brands?
Thanks… Richard
I have the PM 5” on mine. I think a 6” would be pretty big for the 833. 4” would be handy for me at times as well. I don’t really have any experience with any others however. Hope this helps.
Those vises look to be reasonable in price and they seem to have some jaw options that would be useful , Kurt vises are probably top of the line. Shars tools has vices that are not bad but most of their stuff is imported and out of stock recently.
i would avoid the swivel base on a CNC machine personally not really needed and they sit higher than a CNC vise.
Jay & Todd… Thanks for the insight. I did some research and people seem to love the GMT vises. I am leaning towards the 5", but their 4" premium vise has some interesting features.
Thanks again… Richard
the jaws that are serrated work really good with plastic and softer material like Aluminum. they help if you have a wide thin piece that tends to bow when you clamp down on them harder. that style of jaw can be handy. they do bite into the material and leave marks and if you over tighten they can get you into trouble too. but the idea is that they are operation 1 jaws and any marks in the material get machined off in the 2nd operation. basically you just need and extra 1/8 on your thickness when you work on parts this way. i don’t like any less than .1 to hold on to and .025 extra to avoid the jaw tops with your tool paths.
personally the Kurt and GMT are high end and my pockets are not that deep 
i have 3 of the Shars imports 1- 6" single and 2 double 6" and i have had them for 15 years now and they get the job done too. they are just a lot more budget friendly or at least they were when i bought them. imports are on the rise so if the price was close i would go with the USA manufacturer over an import.
I would not put any vise bigger than 5" on that mill. There’s too much overhang off the front of the table and you lose valuable Z axis height.
I have a 4" Glacern vise and the quality is excellent.
Thanks for your thoughts. Glad to hear that you are happy with the quality of the Glacern vise. It is really tough to figure out the right size vise. I like the idea of the 5" vise, but there are more options available for 4" an 6". I believe Jay and Dr. D are using 6" vises on the PM-833TV. Jay mentioned the Glacern serrated jaws. I think this is Glacern’s version of the popular Mitee Bite TalonGrip Vise Jaws. Like most vice accessories, they are available for 4" or 6" jaws. Again… Thanks for your thoughts.
Here is the link to the Mitee Bite TalonGrip vise jaws:
Thanks… Richard
yeah the talon grip about the same thing. the only difference is the talon grip are modular or at least the ones i have used at least. you can add or remove sections to fit the work piece. they should all work about the same i think. i went with 6" vises just because i have a full size Bridgeport mill and have a gantry machine with 50" x" 100" of travel so Z travel is limited but they would still work even though i don’t intend to use them there. the grinder conversion on the other had might be a good fit though. 8 " vises you don’t even want to think about even if they would fit. anything over 6" is hard to take on and off the machine by hand. i have 8" vises at work and don’t bother with them for this reason and make due with 6" vises.
in this case i would probably just go with a 4" vise you always have the option to put the jaws on the outside and increase your width. this is a pretty common way to deal with bigger piece. Z height is probably the big concern so you can get tools over the parts you make, if all else fails you can always mound directly to the table with clamps. there is no all in one solution for everything so you have to adapt to what you may be working on.
I had a Kurt 6" on my manual Bridgeport and loved it. I have thought about the GMT 4", but I can’t find parallels for it, something I used extensively. Haas is also selling a vise for a pretty good price around $400 I think, but I don’t know about the quality I’m glad to hear about the GMT.
Thanks Phil. I am new to machining. I have not worked with mills etc. since high school over 40 years ago. Just curious why it is hard to find parallels to fit the GMT 4" vise?
Thanks… Richard
I have looked at they usual places for 4" parallels. KBC, MSC, Travers and they have lots of 6" but no 4". I might look into wavy parallels they are just over 4".
Here is a link for 4" parallels. HHIP 3900-3002 1/8 x 4" 10 Pair Precision Parallel Set: AmazonSmile: Industrial & Scientific
Just curious… If the 6" parallels stick out 1" on either side of a 4" vise, what problems does that cause?
Thanks Richard, I didn’t think of looking in Amazon. I bookmarked it.
I frequently use stops once I get stuff aligned and they could interfere, and I would probably cut myself, they are sharp. And you can’t use keepers