Panavise Magnetic Base

prusaprinters

<p>This is  an upgrade to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/PanaVise-209-Vacuum-Base-Jr/dp/B000CONJUM/">Panavise 209 </a>vacuum base PV Junior vise. </p><p>This vise is pretty convenient except that it has one problem, after a short while the base leaks, or the surface is not smooth enough and it won't hold with its suction cup. You can replace the suction cup and it will be okay for another 3 to 6 months and then it will have problems again. Worse, even when the suction cup works the base is not very rigid.</p><p>My solution was to print a new base for this vise with a twist, magnets!</p><h4>Getting Magnets and Embedding them in the Base</h4><p>The magnets came from two non-working Seagate 5.25" hard drives. These magnets are used with the disk heads to position the heads over the disk. They are neodymium magnets and quite strong. Since dead hard drives are often quite easy to come by, you can take apart two or three to get some “perfect” magnets. The magnets are generally glued to the holding frame in the hard drive but with careful prying with a thin blade like a putty knife, you can separate them without damaging them. In this upgrade they do not need to be cosmetically perfect since they are <i>inside</i> the base. </p><p>In the picture labeled “test-pocket-for-hd-magnet” you can see a test print I did with a 37 x 15mm pocket that is 3.5mm deep. In the picture, the base is 4mm thick and the pocket starts 0.5mm above the “bottom” surface.</p><p>I used this to test how well the magnet would stick to steel when being separated by 0.5mm of PLA and it has great holding strength. It was so great that I considered making the base with just two magnets but decided to go with three because it definitely would hold to anything.</p><p>In the final base, the first four millimeters are printed, then the print pauses and waits for you to insert magnets into the pockets, and then it covers them with an addition 2 mm cover for a total thickness of 6mm. If you have to re-design the pockets for different magnets you will need to set the pause GCODE using PrusaSlicer to the layer just before the pockets are covered. In this design the pockets are 3.5mm deep.</p><p>I have included a picture of the paused base print where the magnets are inserted.</p><h4>Leg Holes and Leg Printing</h4><p>The two Legs have a separate G-code file. They were separated into their own file because they are printed at 25% infill for extra strength whereas the base is printed at 15% infill which saves filament and time. If you look at the print of the base (or the model of the legs) you will see there is a round hole with three slots surrounding it. These slots fit a specialized washer that is used in the vise to keep the base from rotating when it has been tightened down. This special washer has ridges which match up with ridges on the vise and when pressed together prevent rotation of the vise in the base holder.</p><p>The other leg has a square hole which goes around the “axle” the vise is mounted on and keeps the axle from turning when you tighten the knob.</p><p>The critical dimension is that these two flat sides are separated by 30.60mm. This insures that the legs do not flex when tightening the vise base while keeping everything nicely lined up.</p><h4>No Permanent Changes</h4><p>Because the vise is made to have the base replaceable, we do not need to make any permanent changes to move it to this new magnetic base. This means that you can keep the suction base around and restore it to using that base at any time if, for some reason, you need to use that instead of the magnetic base. </p><p>Panavise makes a number of <a href="https://www.panavise.com/index.html?pageID=1&amp;id1=64&amp;startat=1&amp;--woSECTIONSdatarq=64&amp;--SECTIONSword=ww">action camera mounts</a> (like the GoPro Camera) which use the same suction base and so they are compatible with this upgrade as well. </p>