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A good vise is a fundamental tool for precision machining. In addition to choosing the right size vise for your machine, identifying the right types of vise for workholding is critical to making sure your workpiece is secured while its being milled. There are a three types of vises that you’ll commonly encounter in CNC milling – the machinist vise, the CNC vise, and the toolmaker vise.

Workholding is one of the most hot-button issue in the worlds of machining, metalworking, and general fabrication. While finding new ways to hold parts as you cut can be an entertaining endeavor, if you’re on a budget and/or schedule, it will plague your very existence. Vises are one of the primary ways to hold your work, and milling soft jaws to fit specific parts is a common practice.

We’ve all been there – that moment of panic when the machine makes an awkward noise or the spindle seems like it’s making a rapid move just a bit too close to the vise. When you learn to trust the machine and your programming, things become so much easier, but there are still a few mistakes that folks worry about making that really shouldn’t be a concern.

Fixturing and workholding is not only important for milling and machining, but it’s also vital for prototyping and QC processes. While 3D printing may not be as rigid or robust as other forms of workholding, these can be part of the advantage to 3D-printed fixturing.

Workholding is a vital piece to any machinist’s arsenal of knowledge. So much so that there is an endless list of books solely dedicated to workholding design – like the two we have available, Jig and Fixture Design Manual and Basic Fixture Design. Some corporations even hire engineers to do nothing but design more efficient ways of keeping work in place.