Vevor 7" tilting milling vice, mine landed.

[Jonathan Coates]

At the price, around $50, it's a steal, except it has some, let's say quirks that need ironing out. Paul at Haxby Shed has a review on the larger version here

Well the main issue with the smaller one is that the worm drive is too tall and the top bit rocks on it unless the two locking nuts are tightened down. Perhaps that's why Paul's one rocked on the table from new, a bent casting due to the overtightened lock nuts for shipping?
The usual dirt and crud has been cleaned out now and I'm not sure if the curved surfaces fit together correctly or if more parts will be machined in the future. Perhaps a brass shim between the castings might be better?
I'm going to machine off a bit from the pads where the worm wheel mounts and see if that makes it better. Will report back when I've had time to play with it.

 

[Jonathan Coates]

I machined a bit (0.3mm) off the pads and tried it again and the rock over the worm wheel had gone. The top section now sits reasonably well on the bottom section. After reassembling it I tried the rocking test and, sure enough, it rocked.
I turned the thing on it's back and began setting it up for the lightest of skims to true up the base, but this turned into a pain quite quickly due to the T slots on the mill and the odd shape of the underneath of the table. Then the light bulb moment happened. The zero mark needs to line up when the top surface is parallel with the bottom surface. So I set the zero mark on the scale and flycut a skim off the base to get it to sit correctly on the mill table.
This went awry as my mill head had somehow got out of tram and I ended up cutting two shallow valleys along the length of the thing. Using a straight edge it was obvious that the base wasn't flat so after tramming the head I cut a skim off again.
Second time lucky, the base is flat and the zero index lines up when the angle is zero.

 

[krypto]

I have the bigger version of that thing. About the only thing going for it is the price...

Set the table at an angle and then sweep the top. I have to shim mine just to get it within a several thousands. I think the mating surfaces are done with a sander. You can't get the full 45 degrees of angle travel unless you remove the gear movement and you can't turn the gear movement if the table is angled very far.

The whole thing is just half-baked.

 

[user 284]

If it were me and I was wondering about the fit between those male & female radii, I think marking one of either with even a sharpie as a fill in for engineers blue would work well enough to give you some indication for the fit between the two surfaces. I don't fully agree with Paul's video comments about the worm. He did in general point out the degree scale would be ok for lower accuracy work. But if your needing to cut an angle with better accuracy, then your going to be setting that table angle with something like a vernier protractor, sine bar and gauge blocks etc by running an indicator across those and using the worm as your fine adjustment until it's correct. And in my opinion, gently snugging those table rotation locking bolts would help with those adjustments since the worm would then be always loaded in the same direction.

You might have already learned the lesson yourself by now Jonathan. Any time I'm going to do a milling job that requires some accuracy, I now make a habit of double checking the head and / or vise tram. It only takes a couple of minutes, and it's saved me a few times from doing the job twice. But I doubt there's many who didn't have to learn that the same way I did.

 

[Jonathan Coates]

Pete's suggestion about measuring the fit is good if the things had machined surfaces in the way that we tend to think of them. The fit on such Chinese stuff can be impressive but my new tilting table is not up there with the best. If you imagine checking the fit between two bricks, that's about what we're looking at.
If you want super accuracy, then I can recommend Stefan Gotteswinter (apologies if I've got the spelling wrong) on the YouTube. He has a series where he takes a similar item and treats it as a casting kit. I needed something to get rough angles sometimes. I'm sure it can be set to a good degree of accuracy, eventually, but the worm is a bit rough and I'd be tapping it the last bit at least.
I'm interested in how far off the machined edge of the tilting bit (the edge and face of this look acceptably finished BTW) is from the tilting axis, so I'm trying to get my head round how to check that next, along with bits for the shaper, work and home life. I've got to an age where a week can pass in what used to be a day and I don't get as much done. I already know it has issues but it's nice to know them in advance, so if I clock the thing in on the edge, then tilt it, does it tilt evenly, or lop-sided is the question.

 

[user 284]

While I haven't bought one of the tilting tables yet. If the radii of both the upper and lower halves are that poorly fitting, then your preset datum point on the work piece to either one or both milling table travels is without question going to shift around. Depending on what you might be using it for, that may or may not matter. As Stefan Gotteswinter has said, a lot of this less than industrial level tooling is sort of a kit of semi finished castings. And some of his older videos are about the best example I can think of for what can be accomplished to improve some of what we can afford to buy.

Depending on how far into it anyone would want to get, I might look at how the existing parts or additions could be made to make it work as it should with a better degree of accuracy by re-machining what's already there, or removing what can't be re-machined to fit and possibly bolting in cast iron blocks. I'd then use a boring head to bore both of the partial radii on the female half until they do fit that re-machined upper male radius. But since I don't have one of those tables in front of me, I'm not totally sure if that could be done. And if it could, then it's going to involve a fair amount of high precision work. I think after the comments about the parts fit on these tables you've made Johathan, I'll stick with my original idea and save for a Vertex or better tilting table.

But an additional thought for whatever it's worth. I did notice something that Haxby Shed video didn't show is checking and indicating the lower half's female radii until it's true to say the milling tables X axis. Then checking across the front edge of that casting. To set up and use these tables so the tilt C/L axis is parallel to the mill table axis, your also going to need a reference datum point to indicate that rotational C/L until it's square to the mill table travel. If that's out at all your going to get an unexpected and partial compound angle. I've had that exact problem show up when cutting a short 5 degree angle in a mill vise that showed a visible misaligned taper across the part. It turned out the head tram was only off by about .001" in the Y axis. If there already isn't a datum face that can be used and depended on, well that's why we own milling machines.

 

[krypto]

While I hate to spend any more time on this angle table than I already did a few years ago, I still will post a bunch of pictures I took at the time to show that I didn't half-ass my attempt to repair the table. It was a fully-assed attempt over several days with not a whole lot to show for it.

My table wasn't from Vevor, but lets face it these are all made in the same dirt-floored factory. This is also the bigger model. I think there might have been a thou or two of a dip in the table in this position, but it was fine. As long as you use the table like this, at zero degrees, you won't have any problems. But that's not why you bought an angle table...

At this point, I could see some problems as the guides weren't at the same height. Unfortunately, I don't own any equipment that can accurately machine this. They didn't either!

Now I'm going to get into how this worm driven angle setter is a very poorly thought out and a complete joke. Notice you can only turn the screw from one side.

You only have access to the screw if you angle the table away from you which sucks for setting-up objects on the table. The mechanism also limits the angle of the table as shown here. The solution is to simple remove the entire worm drive system. You don't need it! If you can lift the table onto the mill you can snug the bolts and easily tap the table to the required angle.

This picture is from an Ebay auction, but this is what a proper angle table looks like. Notice that the crank handle is far away from the table so you can actually adjust the angle without the table getting in the way. This is from Yuasa and, of course, even used it is MUCH more expensive.

Yes, they couldn't be bothered with sanding the tops of the mounting lugs so you nuts get fouled and the table shifts about when you tighten the table down.

Luckily, I was able to reach in with a fly cutter and machine this surface.

Still couldn't hit 45 degrees and found this inside bit needs milled down for clearance. This extra long end mill did the job.

Here's how you set the angle. It's really easy and you don't need the worm gear. Snug the bolts and tap it in. Notice the plastic protractor on the angle table isn't bad.

Now what I found that when the table is set at an angle and you sweep the top with an indicator you get a lot drop in one side. When you move the table in the other direction (closer to the mill), the opposite side drops. I spent quite a bit of time trying to file and sand the top of the base to produce a better result but I didn't get a tremendous improvement and it's still far from perfect.

As you can see, sweeping the indicator nets .015 of difference and this was after I worked on it. I should state that when mounted on the mill the table was zeroed-in via the front machined surface. The more you angle the table the worse the drop gets.

And here's how you "fix" it, you just jam a piece of shim stock between the base and table and tighten the bolts. Several different thickness of shim stock are kept in the box with the table. The further the desired angle is away from zero the thicker the shim will need to be.

What a long-winded post! Hopefully somebody find this useful.

 

[ShopShoe]

"Hopefully somebody find this useful."

I do, and I think there are probably others here who also do. I enjoy stories of what can be done with some of the less expensive items out there and I enjoy stories of home-built jigs and machines.

I have done some of that myself and I consider it part of the learning process and a good run-up to taking on some of those expensive engine casting kits.

Anyone who posts more threads about improving, modifying, or building things for shop use will find me in their audience.

As far as the time and hassle, It's a hobby and spending time in the shop is the final goal.

--ShopShoe

 

[peterl95124]

I've bought two tilting vises, the second one was just barely useable after putting some brass shims in one of the two circular ways, the first one was a total loss. it's like these were made for woodworking not for metalworking, at least that's been my experience. The one pictured here at least has enough mass that it can be "corrected" if you have the time and patience. Cheers to this guy that did it !!!

 

[Jonathan Coates]

I had a chance to try the thing cutting the edges off the gib strip for my shaper top slide. The tee slots are smaller than both my mill and shaper so I have no tee nuts to fit. Luckily the head of an M10 bolt (or a nut, obviously) fits in the slot. The bolting down lugs are awkward things as the hardware has to be as short as possible or they hit the locking nuts for the tilt part.
The part wasn't something that had to be cut accurately so I didn't measure how bad it all turned out, but it works.

 

[krypto]

With my table I used a t-slot cutter to mill out the slots so I could use the same mounting hardware as the mill. That's one of the good things about it.

Before I bought the tilt table, for angle work I used the simple arrangement as shown below. While it has some limitations, it's very quick to setup and seems more accurate than the angle table. I will continue to use it for small work.

Awhile ago I made a simple fixture plate for holding small objects that is usually held in the milling vise. For angle work, a large round had a quarter removed and the fixture plate is attached to that round. Here the angle of the plate is set via angle plates.

The fixture plate is an alternating grid of threaded holes and reamed holes for dowel pins. In this picture you can clearly see the round that is held in the milling vise. The work is a gib strip for a cross slide and the milled spots are at an angle to eventually take the gib adjustment screws.