In the prototyping department and toolroom at BNL (UK), a leading British manufacturer of plastic bearings and gears, machining lead-times are much shorter following the purchase of a pair of Chick One-Lok CNC vices through sole UK agent 1st Machine Tool Accessories.
The workholding units have replaced conventional wind-up vices on two Hurco machining centres at the Knaresborough factory in North Yorkshire. Not only are workpieces secured faster, but repeatability and safety are also improved.
“With a conventional vice, the movable jaw tends to ride up when a part is clamped, so you have to use a mallet to tap it down,” points out BNL’s toolroom supervisor Chris Hargraves. “Then you usually have to tap the handle to make sure the part is fully secured. We machine up to 50 plastic components at a time here and it was a time-consuming process that is no longer required with the One-Loks.”
The controlled clamping action produces a pull-down effect as the jaws close, he explains, so components are always seated firmly after the handle is tightened by hand. Positioning of the components is also more precise, so machining is more consistent from batch to batch.
Hargraves points out an additional benefit of the One-Lok design, namely that 1st MTA offers outboard hard jaws that can be used to extend the clamping range from 203 mm to 432 mm, allowing larger parts to be machined. BNL produces aluminium fixture plates, for which the optional external clamping arrangement is very useful.
