We’ve been moving forward with building up another 5 cars for Sector 111 which means we have a lot of parts to make and I’ve been spending lot of time in front of the lathe. After machining parts I’m often left with lot of finished parts that need to have the burrs removed.

In the past we have typically just used a hand drill with a single flute countersink but often it’s difficult to completely remove a burr from steel parts and often if there is a burr on both sides of the part the countersink can catch and spin the part in your hand which is dangerous.

In other instances there are just so many parts its very tedious to do them all by hand. I’ve been using the mill more and more often to remove burrs but the biggest challenge is locating the part consistently in the vice since it doesn’t have a “V” cut into it. V-blocks can help but since they don’t ‘retract’ with the vice they often become annoying.

This past week I decided to make my life easier and design a set of modular jaws that can be bolted into the mill vice. Since very little clamping force is actually required I figured 3D printed jaws should be plenty strong enough to do the job and it has actually allowed me to innovate a bit. Instead of just making a set of jaws with a “V” I made the jaws completely modular allowing for custom inserts to be designed and printed locating any shape or size part. Additionally I can print the insert with a “step” so I will no longer need to use parallels to hold a part high enough in the vice. Now removing burrs is as simple as setting the Z stop, locating the part along X and Y, then just dropping a parts into the vice. Simple and fast!