pipe vise to press

[Damion78]

Hey just wondering if anyone has ever turned a pipe vise into a press of sorts.I'm not even sure what I would do with it but it seems like it might work

 

 

 

this is a smaller one but I have seen much larger ones.

[arftist]

It would work fine, within the limits of it's size. 

I have a 6" Rigid pipe vise (it will grasp and hold 6" pipe) and even that monster doesn't have much room for tooling and stock

(about 7x7")

You could readily add height though, since pipe vice frames bolt together. 

 

One tool I made from a small hand screw press is an upsetter. 

I made a set of grippers and replaced the jaws of a large Wilton vice with the grippers. 

I then made another set which worked on the taper principle. 

In operation, one heats the 1/2" square bar with a torch. 

as it becomes plastic pressure is applied until the bar is bulged to the size desired. It works very well and is far easier than any kind of hand upsetting operation. I made it for one job (a grill) and as an experiment it only fits 1/2" square bar, but if I ever have a need to upset the center of a bunch of bars I know an easy method. 

 

Jock at Anvilfire told me I should have made the device horizontal instead of vertical (I sent him pictures) so that any length bar could be worked. 

[Ironmike]

arftist, Could you post some pics of that?

                          Ironmike

[iron quake]

I think this idea has a lot of merit for small parts.

[Chinobi]

Not my idea originally, but a 20 ton hydraulic bottle jack (harbor freight or similar, like you would use to lift a car) built into an H-ish frame makes a dandy press substitute for small work. It's as slow as you think it is, but it works quite nicely for setting welds on Mokume stacks.

You might need to create something like the armature on a screw press to get enough leverage on that pipe vise, hopefully the screw can support the load :)