Talk to Michael. He might make you one for one of your Hand Tool Rescue wrenches. (I noticed that one of the other designs he looked at used an HTR wrench as the item to hold.)
I don't know what you're paying youtube for promoting your channel, but it's probably worth it. I was also recommended your fractal vice video out of the blue a few weeks ago, and have since subscribed and been enjoying your back catalog. You're doing amazing work.
First time I had come across your channel and I was an instant fan. Great technical skill and humour. Needless to say your fractal vise video was very inspiriational.
If you think about it, the bones in our upper arm, lower arm, hand and the three finger segments are also kind of like a fractal, each segment becoming smaller than the previous but with a similar form. This really seems to be a thing in nature.
Thats not what a fractal means though, a fractal is simply a shape that no matter how far you zoom in it will not lose its roughness. Similar to a coastline. Fractals can be self-similar but typically aren't
@@PublicVoidStart909 dude, a fractal is a repeating shape/pattern that us matter how far you zoom in will keep it’s show up until the ATOMS NOT FOREVER.
@@PublicVoidStart909 He/She said that it was similar to a fractal, not exactly like it. Meaning it follows the general concept of a fractal but does not exactly resemble it.
It's a really sad thing that the fractal vise was lost to time, it's such a good device, and seeing its restoration to having a place of prominence and popularity is kinda heart warming.
@puncledorf : The problem with a fractal vice is that it is not really a substitute for a normal parallel-jaw vice, so you need to have space for it as well. For instance, if you want to hold a small object, it gets very 'fiddly'. Admittedly the fractal vice I used was a monster. 😜
Its a very cool device for sure but its not really any more useful then a normal vice most of the time. From what iv seen of people using these is they actually dont hold certain objects as good as you think. The way it distributes the weight tends to leave room for what ever you put in the vice to start sliding out if you are doing some really intense work on what is in the vice.
@@billfred9411 Huh, I'd think that the vise would hook under bits and make it really hard to slide in any direction besides maybe a pulling/leveraging it up from the vise. Can't image it would slip down or up the vise.
@@pubcle Notice how everything is laying flat in this video? When i say up and down i mean vertically from were you would be looking at the vice. It will grip around the shape and hold it very well in that regard. what i mean is it slips vertically. The example i saw this with was Adam savage using it to drill a hole in a glass bottle which i will add is no easy feat and he used this vice. The problem was the bottle would slip vertically as he drilled it because the vice doesint have much vertical grip. I should also add if its a very solid object you could just crank it super tight and whatever's in probably wont budge at all . you could likley modify the vice to entirely solve that problem i mentioned as well.
@@PiefacePete46 they make a large and small “jewelers version”. Adam Savage from that old discovery channel show I forget what it’s called recently bought one on alibaba and made a video of it. They come in 2 different sizes. The large one is around 2,500$ usd
Whoever says that Michael is "copying" videos of others needs to actually watch his videos. He references even the things he didn't try and links videos and files. Not to mention all the contributes he's made to open source projects. Stellar work Michael, thanks for getting me into 3d printing and design.
Whoever says that Michael is "copying", is basically saying that "I see people making X, so I want to make is myself" is bad. Also, I don't think this is "copying" because he do everything himself, from the designing to the printing, included tweaking. If you say that that is still "copying", well, we do that every *beeping* second.
@@sarahkatherine8458 I may be late to this convo, but if we were not able to copy basic mechanisms, we would not be able to make new mechanisms. Most of them use some sort of previously designed base mechanisms. This is why I like books like 50x Mechanical Movements (Henry T Brown)
Your split design also allows you to use different facing materials. Could sub in steel, brass, wood. Perfect for working on delicate pieces. This vise would be great for gunsmiths in particular, I think.
As someone who uses a vice several times a day I would suggest a couple of practical variations. 1. One less level of fractals, 4 ‘jaws’ on each side should be plenty for any real life situations I can think of and that is still 4 times as many contact surfaces as used successfully for most situations. I think you probably want about twice the depth of jaws. I would like to see something about 4 times the depth on a woodwork vice to hold something like an axe handle or a carving vertically with much less point loads. If you are thinking of using something like this it is probably because you want to grip something gently but firmly. The plastic components are gentle enough and the previous suggestion should help make it strong enough. Making it as a jaws that fit onto a normal metal working or woodworking vice could actually take this from a cool and inventive idea to something that is actually very useful in a number of situations. Thanks for the post, and bringing windscreen wiper design to a vice.
If you don't have a 3d printer, just upload the the files to shapeways and have them print them for you, for a fee of course. You can even get metal prints, but that won't be cheap
Ok, hear me out- print this out with low infill and single layer wall thickness, then do a "lost-pla" casting with aluminum, and voila, metal fractal vise!
Ah! your constraint mechanism is genius, something I really was stuck on. same with the dovetails, although I will say I have found printing them with supports to be less detrimental than I was expecting, the supports printed only ended up being a .6mm line. Very nice design though, your design flow is so much neater than mine.
As soon as I saw Hand Tool Rescue's video, I though, "Someone's gotta do this!" I'm glad this has actually happened - now all I need is a 3D printer of my own!
This would make a great starting point for making a metal vise: PLA could be used to make patterns for casting metal parts. The design as you've made it would allow for interchangeable plastic soft jaws at the D level on an otherwise metal vise, too. Big, big thumbs up for making the design open source!
@@atomicskull6405 at the point where you're 3dprinting metal, you're better off using it for weak parts that aren't going to be compromised by being highly porous. a vise is probably not what you want to be extremely weak steel.
Here's an advantage to the plastic vise: no marring of the surface you're clamping. Unless it's a plastic, anything you put in it will be harder than the vise itself so you don't have to worry about damaging the part.
metal version on aliexpress in 3, 2 .... (actually I hope that happens) how are these not widely known about and why not still in production. I can think of countless projects this would have been great on.
I would have assumed, that it is hard to grip stuff very tight without leaving marks. Similar results can probably achieved by just gripping it violently with classic tools or with softer materials like rubber (in that case it is less constrained, but probably less damaged, too?) The biggest reason is probably that the manufacturer needs to think about customers and most classic customers probably grip flat stuff or already use their own version, so they didn't see the market. Maybe they overlooked it.
I think these vices were mostly made in the 1900's for holding items while being manually engraved. Engraving is not such a big business these days, with other processes being used for the same effect commercially, so I imagine it would be a very niche market, because even today they would be very expensive.
Just wanted to express my appreciation at you sharing the source CAD files - it's nice to have STL's to print things, but the moment someone wants to tweak things, STL is awful. By having your CAD, they can directly make adjustments as they please :) I'm sure you know this and that's why you shared it, but it's just refreshing to see someone making that choice.
This is absolutely outstanding. It offers the perfect grip on the object it's holding. Shows how powerful fractals are, and shows how they can be applied in real life to make cool and unique fuctions. It may not do as well as rhe normal vices. I feel like a semi sphere shaped version of this design would make it even more affective when it comes to more 3 dimensional objects
@@koopdi I'll try to explain the best I can on how I imagine it going down. instead of the vice being like the way it is in the video (2 dimensional) the parts would resemble more 3 dimensional all connected with a joint system that has circular freedom like ball and socket joints all working down into a fractal as shown in this video but instead of being flat it should be almost like a ball that is in 2 halves all descending down into smaller and smaller self-similar parts of it's self-giving a 3-dimensional grip on an object making desired objects less likely to slip ad there is more of a grip area. hope that makes sense. I'm no genius I wouldn't even know where to start with creating such a thing it's just an idea. it would require more parts but it could work
Makes sense. I might have a go at modelling something like that later. I didn't think of the ball/socket. Good idea. I was thinking of the same dovetail track system but with each segment rotated 90deg from it's parent.@@sizzleshnizzle9484
Man 3d printing seems to damn helpful when it comes to prototyping and making your own stuff. Really sucks that shipping costs more than the goddamn printer itself to my location.
Pretty rad. I’ve recently started experimenting with 3D printing molds and then using carbon fiber casting for the final product (for projects that need more strength). This project seems like an excellent candidate for a carbon fiber upgrade. Cheers and excellent CAD work as well.
I don’t have a 3D printer but this video is just incredible. So detailed and such a good walk through on building and assembly. And the fully open source aspect is just amazing to see after all the work you put in to making this.
Oh man you shouldn't have plugged that other video idk if i am going to make it back now, Here is a comment for the algorithm though and ill give it like haha!
@@jorgemiguel2641 yeah. Are common people willing to buy that metal fractal vise? How often would they use it? It's not just quality and creativity, it is about real world usage, practicality, and price-to-performance.
I'm new to all of this, I'm researching to get started on the 3d printing world and I most say that this is amazing work and total admiration and respect to you for sharing your work and contribute to the community making it open source. Congrats and just subscribed to your channel.
Glad I'm not the only one that came to the same sad conclusion that these fractal vises just are not available anywhere, anymore. So cool you did this vid @teaching tech I'm going to make one with my children now! Super Cool!
I'm not sure of the repeatability of location of the part in such a vise. Simple enough to find out: can you clamp something in two different orientations? Also will the piece stay firmly against an end stop?This matters a great deal in CNC machining.
@@HuFlungDung2 I agree to a certain extent, i'm sure that as it is, it wont have the repeatability, a bench vise also does not have the accuracy epeatability of a machine vise, but I don' t see why that could not be solved, on the other hand, having to make fixtures all the time kinda sucks as well...a whole lot of effort goes into making fixtures, and often the accuracy is not that great either... I agree if we are dealing with precise cnc' s 0.001mm accuracy, its a bit difficult, way to many moving parts, but 0.01 region should be attainable, especially if you use something like a kinetic lock system and\or have the ability to lock the radiants in place...not saying its a one fit solution at all, but I do think it could save a lot on fixturing...a very usable tool in the arsenal of a machinist...
Probably because of all the moving parts, many which look sort of proprietary, it must have been expensive to manufacture and even more expensive to repair. Just a guess.
Really appreciate this design process. My father showed me the restoration maybe 4 months ago. Your back engineering is really well done, and innovative. The tolerances, and actual design process is really envious... rather than the 'free fall' design I am working with. I'm trying to break bad habits, and this CAD, and explanation, is inspirational. 🙏
4:01 Can't the dovetail overhang issue be solved with this kind of lightning bolt shape? (drive.google.com/file/d/1esv0DgH36oPnjaErialLkGQYEvzQ2HqR/view?usp=sharing) Both halves can be printed the same way, but one half (red) can be assembled upside down.
This is brilliant, i attempted to design my own after watching the hand tool rescue video, and hit some of the same walls you mentioned. Thank you for this video it was great to see how you worked through the design process. Your design is excellent
I've had a psychedelic trip a year ago where I have seen a lot of fractals as an answer to my own engineering problems... Seems like I have seen the future 😂
I noticed that late on and didn't want to disassembled and flip things around. I should probably do that. Wasn't sure if anyone would notice so well spotted!
Great design! You put an amazing amount of thought into it! I have one suggestion for improvement: Make a grove along the center of the long edge of the gripping parts - maybe at a 90°-120° angle. That would make it much easier to hold on flat things like the wrench in you video.
FWIW, I passed the HTR video and info on to the R&D department of Veritas Tools and they would *very* interested, so a high-quality version might be coming in the next couple of years.
This is so cool. I was in awe of the Hand Tool Rescue video of the Fractal Vice and now I have two delta printers printing out parts. Thank you for providing the STL files on Thingverse.
*stares sweats and breaths hard* SUR *keeps staring* SUURR!! *flips around* Me: GRABS ME THAT FRACTAL DEVICE.. BUT SUR IT A SCIENTIFIC DEVICE TO GRIP OBJECTS Me: well then ill beta test it GRAB ME THAT DEVICE
