Self-Centering Speed Vise (Print-in-Place) (v1)

Self-Centering vises move both jaws to clamp your project so the things you're working on remain centered even if they're different sizes. In my case I often need to laser engrave the centers of things that aren't exactly the same size, so traditional one-sided vises tend to engrave them off-center (or require constant adjustment, making me very sad)

This is a print-in-place design, meaning it pops off the printer pretty much fully assembled - this was inspired by this excellent mini vise design by Adam Cook. This is also a fast-operation vise inspired by this lovely design by bitsplusatoms - here each thread has two starts and turns 10mm per revolution (and since it's clamping from both sides, it's actually 20mm per revolution) so it opens and closes quite fast. This also means it doesn't have a ton of mechanical advantage. If there's sufficient interest I'll follow this up with some more variants so you can choose where you want this tradeoff to land :-)

The only part I chose to keep separate is the jaws, as I wanted something where I could easily screw and unscrew custom tools. These are mounted with two M3 screws (somewhere between 10 and 30mm in length) spaced 30mm apart which self-tap into the plastic. These screws also help reinforce across the layer lines for these pieces.

Update: I've also just added two stands, which can lift the vise off the table & mount to pegboard hole spacing (eg ¼" at 1") - these attach with the M3 screw holes in the vise base.

For testing I printed at .3mm with a .4mm nozzle on a Prusa MK3S. Print without support, & I recommend printing the jaws diagonally (as in the slicer screenshot)

Thanks for checking out this project!

If you make one of these, please share the results! I'd love to hear about your experience and see your photos.

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