Step clamp design - Hold down thin or irregular shaped objects while milling!

[Lee Roberts]

Just been reading a thread about clamping and a design someone is working on, in view of that thread i thought i would post this for other people who may like to "have ago" at making their own.

This design is Project 2 from Roy over at www.diycnc.co.uk

It is not always convenient to uses a vice to hold an object or piece of material when milling. It is often better to use clamps and spacers to hold down the item. These small step clamps give you 2 mm steps from 4 to 24 mm and can be used with a separate bar or on their own via the bolt slot. I have used 25mm square aluminium bar which is a common stock size. The cutter used is a 5 mm slot drill as it entails a lot of pocketing operations.

Note: The Code has only been tested on my own converted milling machine using Mach 3 software. You may need to edit the code to suit the feed speeds and parameters of your own machine. The start reference point is the top left hand corner and a tool clearance of 2.5 mm. The G-Code consists of plunge rough routing and horizontal finishing routines.

Below are the files to go with this project.