Vacuum Chucking / Clamping

[DaveL]

My current Segmented Ring Press is getting pretty beat up and it is time to build a new one, so i have been surfing the net to see if someone has built a better design than made current system.

I just purchased a Vacuum pump for vacuum chucking and was wondering if anyone has developed a system to use their vacuum system for vacuum clamping segmented rings together as you stack them up. 🙄

Thanks for any info / comments.

Dave

 

[john lucas]

Except for alignment is works perfectly. I only did it a few times to see if it would work. What I did was to put glue on the rings and then put alittle sand on the mitered corners that stick out and will be cut off later when you round it up. The sand keeps the wood from slipping. It still slips sometimes. I tried small brads but then you had to knock the corners off because you don't want to turn through those.
I also tried using a cone to hold everything centered and that worked great as long as all of your bowls were the same shape.
I quit using the vacuum and went back to clamps for now because I do very little segmented work. Most of the time now I will just put the rings on the lathe one at a time. True up the surface and glue the next one down using a board and my tailstock.

 

[DaveL]

Vacuum Clamping

John,

Thanks for your reply. I figured a Vacuum bag would work but was concerned with the rings shifting as you mentioned. Initially i thought that maybe someone had come up with some type of tube or cylinder apparatus that would fit inside the rings (before the base is installed) and apply pressure downward on the stack.

Thanks again,
Dave

 

[Mark Warden]

You can try an airshock from a car mounted thru a table and a piece of angle iron bolted to the top this would pull straight down. Never did it just a thought.

 

[Richard Baker]

Dave, years ago I used a couple pieces of 2 x 12 with holes in center and 3/4 allthread rod for clamping. Had the aforementioned problem of the pieces shifting as clamping force was applied. Now, like John I just build the piece on the lathe with various "helpers" (cone center, jam chuck in scroll chuck or faceplate in tailstock adapter, etc.) on the tailstock to provide alignment.