Quickgrip Festool clamp hybrid

[LostInTheWood]

The festool clamps are great, but lack the handiness of the quickgrips.  I was going to buy the DeWalt version which would have been exactly what I'm looking for, but they only fit the rails and MFT rails.  They don't fit into the holes in the MFT.  I figured modifying them would not be as reliable as the forged leg on the festool clamps so I went the other way and modified the clamping end.  For about $21 I picked up a set of the smaller QGs, not a big loss for the sake of experimentation.  I went to work opening up the areas for the festool clamp bar to pass through.  I used an endmill  and mounted the parts on the cross slide of my lathe.  It's a little rough, but those of you with three axis machines should find this easy.  I fine tuned everything with a small file and put it all together.  It turns out that they work great!  Easy one-handed use.  They don't have the crushing power of the screw clamps and a little less throat than the originals ( both jaws seen in first pic for comparison), but a small price to pay for how I would like to use them.

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[waho6o9]

Most excellent!    [smile]

 

[rmwarren]

Very cool idea, I have been Jones-ing for one handed clamps.

You gave me an idea for an alternate, I may try to lop off the end of one of my quick-grips and weld a piece of bar stock on to replace it & see how that works.

 

[LostInTheWood]

Thought of that too and it would have been easier.  The reason I didn't do that was for the strength of the finished joint.  You need to lop off quite a bit of material on the bar and "heel" part of the assembly to get it to pass through the MFT hole.  Even with built up weld in the right places I wasn't sure.  Maybe the smaller QGs would work better for that idea.  Again, the forged piece on the festool clamp had everything going for it already so I went the other way.  Please post here if you are successful.  I'm temped to try it myself with the leftover parts I have.

 

[crazydave789]

HOLY thread ressurection batman -

however as a search was inconclusive (bar this thread) but I found this :



even in the UK quick grips are cheap and plentifull  [smile]

I was originally thinking of adapting my (well old) original clamps as they double as spreaders by putting a dog on them.

 

[Tinker]

As your clamp tightened it appeared the sliding end kind of tipped back away from perpendicular.  if you bent the other end so it extended a little further so the pressure from the pad would be more in line with the end of the bent piece, i don't think that would happen.
Tinker