Delrin Soft Jaws - Part 1

Is it possible to make soft jaws from plastic materials like Delrin? How much will they deform when tightening a vise? Will they work well enough on parts where you are taking light cuts?

While looking for small blocks of material that can be used for milling some sample pieces, we found some Delrin which was the correct height and thickness. They only needed to be cut to length, and have the counter bore holes added.

We did this easily in Fusion 360 and performed the milling on the Tormach 440. We'll continue this discussion later, once we have a chance to test them on a real part.

Until then, here's a little video of the machine in action. 

Follow the progress on Instagram. Autodesk.mfg account or my personal account.