HFS(R) 3" Cross Slide Vise Drill Press Metal Milling 2 Way X-Y Heavy Duty Clamp Machine

Had to return would not work were I needed I wish it would have

This vise is great. But just like others have said, don't expect to do precise machining right away. I did the same thing everyone else had to do. Fully disassembled the unit and removed all the extra paint from the ways. Reassembled with a light oil. Now it is super tight and ready to do some work.

Pros:- This heavy solid metal device seems very sturdy and well made. I have no worries about its durability.- The mounting slots looked like they might let the bolts slip, but turned out to work great once I had it set up.- The adjusting cranks and compression screws allow for reasonably precise operation over a surprisingly wide range of motion.Cons:- The piece is a little bit tall, be sure you have enough room beneath your drill press before you buy it.- The lower crank is somewhat sticky. Operating it quickly requires so much force that I wind up lifting and shaking the entire drill press (and the workbench it's attached to) if I don't use a second hand to hold it steady. (Still gets the job done though, this is only a minor annoyance)- There were sizable scrap metal chips stuck in the grease in all the mechanisms. It may jam and/or damage itself if you don't clean it before the first time you use it. (Not a problem so long as you notice before you try to use it)Overall a very nice piece of hardware for the price. I am very satisfied with how well it works.

Yes, several other lukewarm reviews are fairly spot-on. The very first thing I did to this vise upon receipt was to try it out, and confirm that it was as clunky as other reviews said. (Very much so. It was almost unusably rough, and the movements were difficult--nearly impossible---to turn without backing off the jib screws, and even loosening the screws near the crank) I then disassembled it to try to improve! I pulled every main piece apart. The first thing I noticed was that the ways were very rough, as well as being warped from bad castings, and **several drill holes** were SEVERELY misaligned. This one looked like it was drilled by hand, folks. I proceeded to file flat and gently smooth the ways (dovetails first, then beds--25 min) and took the jibs to a flat grinding stone to flatten and smooth (3 min) . The jibs have a rough, non-centered hole drilled in one end to grab one of the adjustment screws, so it won't slide out of the dovetail. On the largest (we'll call X) axis--the base piece, the Acme screw passes through a block that pins to the movement above it by a 1/2" (appx) cast pin. This block is not square--not a 90 on it-- and the pin had a nasty casting leftover artifact on the end. The pin was round--it'd been ground or lathed clean enough to fit. The whole block, however--did NOT line up with the bore of the Acme screw from one end of the main base casting! This made the action very rough, obviously. I saw three courses of action. 1) fabricate a new block out of delrin, etc. Could not do because I can't tap Acme with my existing tools. 2) Drill a new hole for the pin inline with the Acme screw. It may mess up the overall throw of the way, but I may yet use this option. 3) Leave the screws holding the crank/Acme to the base casting REALLY loose. YEP! It worked. Next, the Y-axis. One of the jibs would not lie flat. I needed an additional 5-minutes of file work to fix what I hadn't really done right earlier. Once completed, the jib would sit in the dovetail with the screw slightly exposed to hold. The drillings that hold the Acme for the Y-axis were also misaligned, but not nearly so badly as the holes on the X. That said, the drillings that held the Acme-to-casting plate were far enough off that if both used, the crank wouldn't turn. So, I could only install one. I could redrill/tap in another spot on the plate, but I have a feeling that it will be fine. The vise itself was actually fine. It's a chrome plated screw, and moved very cleanly. Once I had greased and re-assembled the vise, movement was better, if not "precise." The adjustment screws were set, and the wing-nutted screws provided solid lockup, so there was no worry of wiggle. There are metered markings on the X/Y crank and plate, but using a micrometer to show how much movement each measured didn't prove insightful--they gave no meaningful meter in either metric or english.

First like many others, mine was really stiff. The only lube on the threads appears to be the cutting oil from cutting the threads and finishing the sliding surfaces. I took it totally apart cleaned it up and applied proper lubercation to all the moving parts. Other than needing some shims to tighten up the loose spots, it does what it is supposed to.If I had mounted the handles and tried to force it to work as it came out of the box, I would have broken the pot metal handles. It is inexpensive and as such needs a bit of a tune-up. It is useable and I like mine. Number one hint is, lubercate it before you force it.

I purchased the Hardware Factory Store (HFS) 5” cross-slide drill press vise, #16044. Despite oddities and flaws, this vise provides new capabilities for my drill press at modest cost. When I unpacked it, I was forced to remove the slides and file the sharp edges of the dovetails because they were preventing the dovetail slides and flat ways from making contact. I ground sharper points on the gib screws so the gibs would press snugly against the dovetails. These improvements made slide movements reasonably smooth. I didn’t check all the machining for flatness, parallelism, and perpendicularity, but the flat ways for the lowest slide are out of parallel with the base by about 0.050”, so this will never be a high-precision vise. The cranks and their spinner handles are plastic and felt like they might fail, so I inserted a metal sleeve in the spinners to take up the slack and filled the square mortises for the cranks with epoxy to tighten them up. The lead screws and dials for the hand cranks are unusual, as the dial has 30 increments per revolution. I attached a digital caliper to provide an accurate readout and found that over the full 5” range of travel, this vise advances 0.133 mm/0.0052” for each increment on the dial, which is 3.99 mm/0.156” per revolution of the dial. This non-standard system will make achieving precision drill patterns unnecessarily difficult.