Fractal Vise
airgraver.com
airgraver.com
Don't really know much about this area, but this comes across as aggressive, overreaching, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
> Question: How much do they cost? > Answer: Price is not known yet. Production has not started and therefore not enough of them have been made to know what the cost will be. You pre-order with a down payment toward the purchase, and be placed in line. See above.
> Question: When will one be ready for me? > Answer: It will be a while yet before production in quantities begins.
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US1059545 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU [3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230008280A1/en
> The patent pending improvements allow for use with engraving vises and other vises.
But in reality their patent applications doesn't even claim that, but rather a specific method for attaching fractal jaws to existing engraving vises as far as I can tell.
btrettel found what seems to be the patent applications in another comment
I tried the following search:
(lindsay NEAR2 ste$5).inv.
Selecting only the US-PGPUB database (published patent applications), I came across the following that seem to match:
See e.g. Phillips screws vs Posidriv screws (cut the tip), or, more prominently, a normal needle vs the Singer sewing-machine needle (move the eye).
You now have a physical copy of a passkey that can destroyed in an instant.
Neat. Potentially useful.
Art: they look beautiful and can be displayed.
Game: breaking it, or watching it being broken, is a lot of fun.
Education: I would say that a huge number of people have been inspired to take up glassblowing after seeing one of these. But not only that, they also serve as a great tool to demonstrate that an object's physical properties are often unexpected based on appearance. I would say a decent amount of people have been inspired to study physics because of this too.
Does the glass explode with enough force to be used as the primary detonator for a high explosive? I'm no explosives engineer, but seems like having an all-mechanical (no chemicals, no electricity) primary detonator could be useful in some situations where the system should be very stable for decades, like car airbags.
What about emergency release valves? Plug the release channel with the tough end of the drop. Use a simple mechanical system to break the weak end if the emergency conditions are met. e.g. a lever attached to a float that snaps the weak end if the fluid level is too high. That should work safely even in an environment full of flammable material.
Getting into more fanciful territory, could a professional assassin create one that was large enough to work as a hand grenade? Or encase the weak end in a jacket and then use it as a bullet with the tough end being seated in the case?[1] Seems like it could almost be a real-world version of the mythical "ice bullet", where after use there wouldn't be enough left for forensic analysis.
[1] Here's a video of someone shooting them from a shotgun, but there's no jacket or spin-stabilization to keep the weak end pointed at the target: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc9pPOrZ_0Q
- so-called "monoplanes" with only a single pair of wings (if not airplanes in general),
- "wireless" broadcasting (if not radio communication in general),
- x-rays,
- "battery eliminators" (dc power supplies you plugged into the wall so you could run a radio without batteries, introduced commercially two years later),
- arc welding,
- air conditioners,
- electric cars,
- diesel ships,
- small motorboats,
- electronic music,
- hydraulic excavation equipment,
- electrical intercom systems,
- electrical door locks permitting you to buzz someone into your building,
- buses with indoor seats,
- phonograph records with more than four minutes of music per side,
- light meters for photography,
- the manufacture of ice (as opposed to sawing it from frozen rivers and lakes in winter),
- parking lots with parking spots outlined with angled lines to permit easy parking,
- cranes with endless-tread tracks,
- diesel locomotives,
- bulletproof vests,
- water slides,
- particle board,
- drive-in restaurants,
- automatic corking machines for bottling plants,
- motor homes,
- motor-operated electrical switches,
- aerial photography,
- metal ladders as light as wooden ones, and
- toothpaste.
oh and also tesla valves
most of these came from https://ia601306.us.archive.org/31/items/PopularMechanics192...
The most common methods of keeping something in place to be drilled/machined require at least one flat face in order to perform the clamping, or else extremely expensive and time consuming custom made fixtures. A fractal vise would perform an adequate job for a wide array of hobbyist level tasks. Even at ~$3000, it would pay for itself after a handful of jobs just from the lack of fixturing costs alone.
I think the real innovation would be to bring this from O($3000) to O($100). I actually think that's possible. There's a 3d-printed version which wouldn't be strong enough, but looking at this, what I think would be needed would be:
1. Simple metal disks, with holes drilled, cut in half. These could be economically made on a waterjet, or more economically, by slicing an extruded pipe into disks, drilling those disks with holes for more disks, and cutting them in half, as well as a top and bottom plate.
2. Plastic (3d printed or, in quantity, injection molded) fixtures to keep it together.
3. A classical vise (this could even be an insert)
The design in my head would have the metal pieces take 100% of the force when this is being used as a vise. However, instead of the complex metal machining to keep this thing fitting together, it would use cheap plastic pieces.
Most hobbyist can afford 0-2 tools in the O($3000) range, and while useful, this doesn't compete with having e.g. a high-quality welder, a mill, or a lathe.
Another homebrew design I found on a quick web search: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/10/fractal-vise-holds-odd-shape...
The biggest problem we encounter with vises is the phenomenon of jaw lift. There will always be some amount of play between the moveable jaws and the base of the vise, there will always be some amount of deflection, so applying clamping forces tends to force the vise jaws apart in a v-angle rather than the jaws remaining strictly parallel.
This causes problems with repeatability and reduces maximum clamping force, because the clamping force is pushing the part up and out of the vise. A lot of engineering effort goes into minimising and mitigating jaw lift.
A fractal vise will always be more susceptible to jaw lift, because the play between those recursive segments will add together. Each segment might only be slightly out of square when under clamping force, but that adds up to a large parallelism error at the clamping faces.
The practical alternative for milling would be something like an Adaptix vise, which uses multiple sliding and locking fingers to allow the clamping faces to adapt to a non-parallel part. Other alternatives would include 3D-printed soft jaws, soft jaws molded with a low-Tg polymer like polycaprolactone, or an adhesive workholding system like Blue Photon.
Regardless, I'm a little shocked that a) I've never seen either of these designs manufactured by low-cost brands like Harbor Freight, and b) the ones that are out there are so expensive. A complete Adaptix vice setup is $7000? I'm sure that makes sense for professional machinists or people working with a LOT of force, but surely a hobbyist version could be made for a sale price less than $100, maybe $200 for a heavy-duty version. It's basically just a big vice that has two smaller, perpendicular vices for its jaws, and the smaller vices have captive, sliding metal bars between their jaws, right? I'm pretty sure I could make a set of jaws that would suit my purposes out of parts that would cost no more than $25 at the hardware store. It would have saved me an awful lot of headache on small hobby projects over the years, so I'm probably just going to go ahead and hack one together.
Either of the fractal designs (classic "teeth at the ends" version versus "flat-faced", for lack of better names) seem like they would require a decent amount of fairly precise machining, so I can understand them costing more, but $2000 for an Ali Express version still seems high.
http://www.steves-workshop.co.uk/tips/lathetech/eccentrics/e...
Fractals always seem to have oddly biological looking behavior, for things made with such simple rules.
But cool, while also practical.
They are trying repackage an old technology they did not create and are threatening to sue everyone else making it. This product already existed before these "inventor" were even born. The original innovator who made this product already profited from it and are long gone from the market.
One wants to produce a tool that helps others make cool stuff, one wants to rip off an inventors design to try to pass it off as his own.
This is everything the patent system is supposed to protect AGAINST. Differences in societal values I guess.
https://blog.jfallen.org/2016/12/26/newport-home-of-the-mole...
A woodworking vice typically has softjaws and despite the flexible-ish nature of this vice they still would leave marks in wood so not much help in the woodshop.
A metalworking shop typically uses vices to hold work that they are going to beat on with a hammer, lean on it with a pry bar, attack with a torch, and generally use as a super-secure hold while applying a lot of forces to the work. The vice here has a lot of precision moving parts which wouldn't really hold up to that sort of use case.
A machinist vice is a precision tool and the fixed jaw is a reference surface for the work. With suitable stops, one can use a machinist vice to place work into a predictable position time after time ("repeatability"). This style of vice can't do that either.
I could almost maybe see this used for small parts fabrication on a drill press maybe? The OP uses it as workholding while engraving which feels a little contrived and there are other cheaper/faster/easier solutions out there but sure maybe?
No force is intended to be applied at all, beyond gravity.
A dedicated jig is always better, but takes time and effort to create. This thing always works moderately well.
It’s usually a pain to hold irregular parts without a flat surface. In fact, I can’t think of a good way to do it at all.
> It’s usually a pain to hold irregular parts without a flat surface. In fact, I can’t think of a good way to do it at all.
Jigs/fixtures, side clamps, strap clamps, toe clamps, Mitee-Bite-style off axis cams, plenty of options. There are commercial manufacturers of flexible workholding solutions similar in spirit to the OP but those are generally targeted at QC purposes where you'll be running a CMM of some sort over the part and so no reference surface on the fixture is needed: https://engtechgroup.com/technical-partner/hyfore-workholdin...
I’m not sure what mitee bite is but the other suggestions are not realistic. Side clamps wouldn't be able to hold something shaped like a 2D Christmas tree rigidly. Strap clamps are not nearly rigid enough even for hobby grade work. Toe clamps won’t work for anything rounded etc. All of the above can be held with the fractal vise.
I use strap clamps on a hobby mill to hold steel while being machined, they are plenty rigid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FVavOy4GUw
Here he's attempting a side clamp design but demonstrates several other solutions commonly used for the home machine shop. Hope you find it helpful!