How to Assemble a Vise with Mates

Assembling a vise is a great way to show many of the different Onshape mates. With Onshape mates, you can create almost any motion. Let’s take a look at the mates needed to put a simple vise together.

To get started, it is important to first fix a part. In our case, the vise base is the fixed part. So let’s begin by inserting the base and fixing it.

Now that we have the base in our assembly, we can insert the other parts.

There are several mates that we will use to put this assembly together. The Cylindrical mate can be used to mate the shaft of the vise to the base. The vise jaw can be mated to the vise base with a Slider mate. A limit can be applied to the Slider mate, allowing you to restrict the motion of the vise jaw and ensure it stays within the correct range.

A Revolute mate can be used to attach the vise jaw to the end of the shaft. The last mates to apply are Pin Slot mates to mate the bolts to their slots in the vise base.

Once all the mates are in place, you can add the Screw relation. This will give you realistic screw motion as the shaft of the vise rotates.