9" Eclipse Vice – Airdropped
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- This topic has 21 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 5 months ago by Selva.
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I just got a 9″ Eclipse Vice from Amazon. The box looked like it was dropped from the airplane with too small of a parachute, which might be how they ship them to my location. Opening it, the quick release looks odd and the jaws don’t move when I turn the handle, which seems wrong to me (pic below).
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You must be logged in to view attached files.11 October 2018 at 4:09 pm #552656as an addendum to the above post ,the lever is way flat it is supposed to be pointing up beside the handle and the QR feature has a button sticking out of it , yours appear to be twisted around to where the QR is activated. my picture is dark but on a big screen is is quite plain to see ,
i don’t know how handy you feel but if you take off the screws holding the back plate on it may just be out of place .it really looks like the flat rod has slipped off the rear support.if there are any pieces laying around , i would return it ..
Thanks for the photo. I don’t know how the bar on mine could have ‘escaped’ since that red button part is confined by the hole in the clip, and seems to be holding the bar in place. It looks more like it was assembled incorrectly. (unless it really was dropped from an airplane, landed on one corner, and the whole vice was torqued enough to release the bar).
The handle seems slightly bent. Still works, but do they come like that or is that another sign of damage?
With the trap of buying heavy things online (eg. shipping cost of something weighing this much) I’ll try a repair. There don’t appear to be any loose pieces, but the box was popped open, and inner bag ripped, so that would be hard to tell.
11 October 2018 at 4:56 pm #552658my handle is not bent , yours had a rough trip for sure , you were lucky they shipped it to you at all , they would not ship to me , i had to find a different vendor and the price was considerable higher
good luck,
11 October 2018 at 6:43 pm #552660The handle shouldn’t be bent – that’s another sign of damage. If you want to try and fix it, the red gizzmo is the nut that engages the screw and the button looking part is supposed to be up in the rectangular hole in the bent plate. That’s what guides and retains the nut. The actuator bar (flat bar) has a spring on the front end so don’t take anything loose until you can get some type of clamp on that bar to prevent it from unwinding. A pair of vise grip pliers works well for that. If you clamp that bar off, take out two bolts that hold the bent plate on and move the nut back under it with the button in the hole and re-install the bolts. The flat bar just rides in a groove in the side of the nut so as long as you have that back in place it should be OK. It’s hard to tell from the photos if anything else is damaged.
Having said all of that, I would return that one if I were you. Doing the simply fix I describe above might work out fine but its a casting and there may be some other damage that isn’t obvious. Good luck with it!
- This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by harry wheeler.
If you have access to Wood Craft, that may be a better way to buy an Eclipse vise. When I bought my vise there, I ordered it in the store and they had it shipped to the store. This meant I did not have to pay shipping, although you do pay state sales tax. Perhaps it is still that way? It also means you can inspect it at the store and means the package will be handled by people used to dealing with this sort of package. I’ve no affiliation with Wood Craft.
Another thing I’ll add is that, if you do reorder the vise, I have never regretting having the largest vise I could.
I forgot to say- Amazon has excellent customer support. I have no doubt they will allow and facilitate a return. It’s hard to find their online chat, but once you do, they’ll probably quickly help arrange a straight-up return as long as you’ve not modified the item.
11 October 2018 at 10:55 pm #552664As Ed points out, Amazon has a very good customer service. They also offer a web-contact for informing on defunct packaging. You can attach your pictures, and will most likely be offered to return the vise free of charge, and have a new sent to you. As the attached photo shows, there are clearly ways for transcontinental transports without any risks for the merchandise (other than moisture and disasters).
Sven-Olof
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You must be logged in to view attached files.Going by the images looks like it was dropped and the quick release lever has come completely off the pin. I would suggest to return it. Amazon will gladly give you a return shipping label so no reason not to.
I too got mine only this week, directly shipped by eclipse but bought through Lowes Canada. The original box looks a bit damaged (not as bad as yours) but it came in an additional brown box which had no sign of damage. So looks like the product gets manhandled in the warehouse itself before its shipped.
Compared to yours mine has only one damage I can live with — the handle is a slightly bent and scuffed. It still moves through the hole so I am reluctant to return as it looks good otherwise — jaws close parallel, the toe-in looks perfect (a bit less than 1/8″), quick release works good etc. I’m trying to get a replacement handle assembly but not sure whether that’s possible.
That said, there are machining burrs on the screw and elsewhere but that looks like the “quality” of manufacturing we can afford these days. I think you can certainly get a better one if you buy again after returning this.
Harry, “The actuator bar (flat bar) has a spring on the front end so don’t take anything loose until you can get some type of clamp on that bar to prevent it from unwinding.”
Me-D’oh! I already unscrewed the bolts and started monkeying around trying to figure out the mechanism. I better quickly get a clamp over that spring before it tries to snap out of its housing when I least expect it…
Ok, now I got a spring clamp clamped over the coiled spring so it can’t pop out spontaneously. That was a close one.
Ed, “It’s hard to find their online chat, but once you do, they’ll probably quickly help arrange a straight-up return as long as you’ve not modified the item.”
Me: I am not good at returning things, but this just might be the one. Got to go outside one’s comfort zone sometimes. But why did it have to be with a 40 lb mail-ordered vice that I just started to dismantle?
Sven: “As the attached photo shows, there are clearly ways for transcontinental transports without any risks for the merchandise (other than moisture and disasters)”
Me: Yes, that is what I expected to see when I got this box. It seems they just took it off the paletts, threw a mailing sticker on it and sent it on its way.
Selva, “That said, there are machining burrs on the screw and elsewhere but that looks like the “quality” of manufacturing we can afford these days.”
Me: Yes, apparently they did not read ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. If I survive this whole spring-loaded situation, I might try to find a way to smooth off those burrs on the screw.
*edited for an addendum* will take another pic but my camera is still charging.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Brian A.
Update: The actuator bar actually had no tension on it when I took the ‘bent plate’ off, so the spring had already sprung. The spring mechanism is still working, so it doesn’t unravel itself and is likely not ‘wound up’ but rather is just a half-turn to tension, and a half turn to remove tension. I can re-tention it by turning the handle back towards the top of the vice. It was difficult, however to fit the vertical red bar into the bent plate, and I don’t know how the actuator bar interacts with the vertical red bar. I guess I need to see what it is supposed to look like when in the released and non-released positions.
Meanwhile, I am looking into the refund process as I agree it may have a crack in the casting etc. On disassembly I can see a tiny divet in the actuator bar where it must have forced the vertical bar out of its housing.
I was looking forward to getting this thing in gear, and using it though.
12 October 2018 at 6:08 pm #552688Right Brian. The quick release actuator handle itself can’t rotate completely because of the main screw/handle. I made a point of clamping the actuator bar just for safety because you can get a finger pinched when the bar slips out of the groove in the red vise nut. My vise is mounted so it’s hard to get good pictures but I’ve attached what I could get. You can see that in the resting position, spring tension on the QR actuator bar pushes the red nut up into the lead screw threads. When the QR handle is operated, that allows the red nut to drop down and disengage from the lead screw. It doesn’t move much – maybe 3/8″.
Looking at your photo’s more closely though, the entire bent plate looks like it is it was damaged. There are two shallow slots in the casting that the tabs on the end of the plate should align with and they don’t seem to do so on yours. You can actually see the front tab on my vise and how it’s aligned. I think yours has been bent open and maybe flattened a bit which might mean that the nut won’t drop down far enough to disengage. Note the washers under the bent plate on my vise. I think they do that to allow for manufacturing tolerances and that would be one way of gaining additional clearance for the nut if you needed to.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.@Harry – Yes, that alignment is odd. I saw those grooves and figured the actuator bar should go in them, but they are located diagonally to the bar, not in line with it. It is as if the QR mechanism was bored into the wrong side of the vice so they don’t line up.
So far I’ve had a 50% success rate in buying new tools online. This one seems to be exceeding my metallurgy skills to repair. (I did look around locally for a tool seller, but found none within the nearest 2-3 hundred miles, might have to make a list and go on a buying spree one day).
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