Hey guys,
I’m looking into designing and printing jaws for a couple 6" vises that are gonna be used to clamp on a 5.75" dia x 30" lg piece of 1018 round stock in a horizontal mill. I need a filament that’s gonna be strong and clamp the part securely, be deformation resistant, not prone to brittle failure, and won’t be compromised by the use of machine coolant mechanically or dimensionally. We’re going to be drilling a ~1.7" diameter hole 22" deep as well as some other operations to give you an idea of the forces at work. We bought a Bambulab X1C Combo kit with a 0.8mm hardened steel nozzle. The filaments that look promising on their website are as follows:
PET-CF
Carbon Fiber Reinforced PET
Product Features
- Very Low Moisture Absorption
- Exceptional Mechanical Properties
- High Dimensional Stability
- Exceptional Thermal Resistance
- Comes with High Temperature Reusable Spool
- Diameter: 1.75mm +/- 0.03mm
Cautions for Use
- 0.2 mm Nozzle Not Compatible
- Stainless Steel Nozzle Not Recommended
- Dry out before use
- AMS NOT Compatible
ASA-CF
Product Features
- Superior Outdoor Durability
- Optimized for Large Models
- Sleek Matte Finish
- Enhanced Stiffness for High Load-Bearing Applications
- Diameter: 1.75mm +/- 0.03mm
Cautions for Use
- AMS Compatible
- Enclosure Printers Required
- 0.2 mm Nozzle Not Compatible
- Hardened Steel Nozzle Mandatory
- Dry Out Before Use
Just wondering which of these you’d recommend for this application, both are carbon fiber reinforced. Also, if you have any other recommendations by a different brand we’d consider those as well. Thanks!
I have made small milling fixtures, with cutouts to fit the part to be milled, out of PLA+ at 100% infill. They worked fine but with less of a load then what you have. The only potential problem I can think of would be the clamping force might deform the jig around the part.
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Deformation is one of the things I’m afraid of. Then again I am just doing end work so as long as the part doesn’t move while milling and cleans up in the lathe op I’m good. I guess I can always make it thicker to compensate, the build envelope on my printer is roughly 10"x10"x10" and the longest dim on my jaws is 6" at the moment. Also not sure how PLA would do with flood coolant
Give it a life jacket 
.
Definitely beef up the jig until you get enough experience to make a good estimate, also the better the part fits the jig the less chance it will deform. I cant say anything about fluid except it might be OK for a while.
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In simplest terms my jaws are opposed 6" long vee blocks, so 4x 6" long points of contact per vise
Why not mill some out of metal, maybe aluminum.
Time savings. Want to be able to make a lot of custom jaws without having to set up a machine for it every time
You won’t be able to print anything that would fall outside of a “soft jaw” level of rigidity without VERY expensive equipment. 22" deep hole as well, I have a ton of follow up questions.
Gotta ask how your machine has the travel to do that in one shot and if it doesn’t, why not just brace the relative sections. Further potentially dumb question, why isn’t this going on a lathe?
Both of these materials “could” work for this application without any additional information. Consider though that proper fixturing/jigs are supposed to secure the work piece to the surface. If your operation is applying tons of force to the jigs you’re probably running too fast. Print orientation is going to significantly affect the quality of your part as well I’m sure you know this. Coolant also won’t help the surfaces of the parts from deforming either so you will need something high temp rated (plastic doesn’t disperse heat as well as metal does I’m sure you know that too.)
Would love to run some FEA for you but would need significantly more information.