How to Grow Your Fractal

In this blog we're going deep into our other add-ons, and some hidden features!

First off before getting into all that here's Sean, one of the founding engineers of MetMo (maybe one day his face will be carved in rock…or metal, who knows) giving a walk-through of the Fractal Vise and how the add-ons interact with it. We thought a real time demonstration would be a good way of showing how it all works and connects and might also be quite interesting to see.

We've not done this before, so please let us know what you think in the comments and maybe grab a coffee and find a comfy chair first... it's a long one!

Let's Go Walkabout with Fractal

If you made it through, congratulations and welcome back! Let's now go into even more detail as we delve into the Adaptor Plate and Conversion Kits we touched on in the walkthrough.

The Dual Vise Adaptor Plate
With the Adaptor Plate your Fractal Vise can bolt to another, doubling your clamping width. If you're working on something longer it can be clamped all along the whole length securely, letting you work freely while cutting, filing, drilling, sanding, or whatever you need to do! 

Bolt To A Bench 

The plate gives the vice a way to screw to a bench with wood screws (or countersunk machine screws/nuts if you're fancy) in a single stand-alone way, or by sitting two Fractals next to each other then screwing the whole connected set down. Whatever you have these bolted to will really grab some attention! 

Connect Two 

The primary use of the dual adaptor plate was originally to let you connect two vices together. We explored several different ways this could be done originally using parts of the vice itself to connect them together, but they were all too small and didn’t feel particularly strong, so in the interest of not turning the vice into a camel we decided to just make a dedicated plate that just worked really damn well.

Aerospace Grade Hard Anodised Aluminium 

This has become our go to metal for most of the MetMo range and is the same stuff they make aircraft undercarriages out of. This alloy is (almost) as strong as steel and lighter than titanium, perfect for a fixing plate like this that will hold everything rigid and provide a strong building platform.

Double Up Your Adjust-a-balls 

Designed as a Universal Fractical Interface (UFI) that allows it to be used with the Ball Clamp, the Workstation, or just free standing, so you can double up on whatever setup you want. Unleashing fractal clamping action upon the globe!

Attach Stainless Steel or Black Fractal to it Too

Want to mix and match stainless steel and aluminium? Or a combination of the 32 and 82mm jaws? No problem, it will happily take whatever you want in whatever configuration you'd like to explore!  

The Conversion Kits!

Here it is, the highly requested 32 to 82 conversion kit!

Originally, we had thought about making this item, but from previous campaigns we learnt that in general a complete product is what everyone really wanted and swapping out parts would leave people with spare parts. So, on this campaign we just went for the full stainless option and the full aluminium in the two sizes. 

But then it was so heavily requested, we just had to make this fractical add-on available for you all.... and here it is in all its glory, all the parts you need to convert your 32mm fractal vice into an 82mm Hulk! And much like Bruce, he's only 82 when he's angry, as it's nice and easy to return him to his standard 32 form... when he calms down.

The Conversion Kit replaces all the components in the mid-section of the above GIF.

As always we used the pre-production run to make any final design tweaks that producing things at scale often finds, helping us reduce the time it takes to make parts and help find any problems before full scale production starts and saves us having to remake things. In general, it has always been a wise move to get this underway sooner rather than later.