If nothing else, you may use some of these techniques to make sub-plates you’ll install on a commercial Fixture Plate you’ve purchased. With up to 20% less CO2e per installation, we support the sustainability of your build and help you deliver tangible cost and time savings. The process uses two blades (both highly wear-resistant A2 tool steel), one for roughing and the other for final sizing. The holes are machined with 6-degree clearance taper on the underside, the holes are straight for the first .

mm) undersize (except for the 1/4 inch insert sleeve, as the lower 16th size to this, 3/16 inch, is too weak for this process). We’re looking to Fixture Plates for accuracy and repeatability, but if temperatures change much, aluminum will make that a problem.A dowel plate’s job is to turn square sticks into round dowels, and the new offering from DFM fits the bill nicely. Having done the dowel pin holes for the keys, we do the large through holes for the countersunk socket head cap screws that will hold the plate down with T-Slot Nuts.

e. smooth bore at top and threads at bottom) and you tap a dowel pin into the hole, you’ll trash the aluminum threads below pretty quickly. Unless you’re an exceptional machinist, you probably won’t be able to build a plate larger than your machine’s travels that is also accurate enough.

The plate can be mounted in a wood block, though I find centering it over a dog hole in my bench works fine. Second set is normal reach, and will be used once we’re done machining the plate supported on 1-2-3 blocks. We can set up a work offset on the machine for the left corner of the fixed jaw, and the g-code will also know exactly where to find the vise and can assume that corner is part zero. That means we probably have to know exactly which holes the sub-plate will be mated to and it can’t sit just anywhere on the table.