Mini Mill Tooling

Vises

There are a range of different types of vises that you can use on a mini mill. See our vise comparison page for a good description of the different kinds of vises.

Choose a vise that will handle the work you do. You don't need a 3" vise if the parts you make are a half inch long. While you can usually put small parts in a large vise, it is more convenient to use an appropriate-size vise.

Vise jaws are often too deep for the work. In general, you want the top of the work piece to extend above the top of the vise jaws. To fill the gap from the bottom of the work piece to the "ways" of the vise, you use parallels. Parallels are strips of metal that have been carefully ground so that the top and bottom edges are parallel with very tight tolerances. They usually come in matched pairs. Place one parallel adjacent to each jaw in the vise and place the work piece so it rests on the parallels.

Vise Options