[ETA]

What are the pro's & con's on aluminium v's steel soft jaws, besides lower weight & faster wear on the aluminium jaws.

Looking for comments

Thanks
Roger

[Cruiser]

The difference is the intended usage !

[Cmailco]

Roger,

I tend to think of it like I would any other piece of tooling. If say, I wanted to make a forming tool for a run of 5-10 pieces, I might use a high density poly board, as I know they work well on short-run, but don't hold up long term. A 10-150 piece run might be perfect for aluminum, 150-500 for steel, then hardened steel for production level work. Just throwing arbitrary numbers out there to make the point.

Steel jaws will last longer, especially if you're really cranking on them.

[Carbide dude]

Aluminum jaws are lighter thus have less centrifugal force at high RPMs. This is important if you're holding by minimal jaw pressure.