ER40 versus 5C Collets - Considerations and Trade-offs

[davidpbest]

I'm driving my son back to college, so can't find the link right now, but I made a post about the 5c collet chuck I got from PM a while back. Definitely not Taiwanese quality, a bit rough as received, but it cleaned up well and works fairly well.

Here is @Ischgl99 review - unlike Clough42, at least he was able to get it apart. Looks kinda rough to me. I would still call PM and ask country of origin.

PM 5C Collet Chuck review

I purchased a 5C collet chuck from Precision Matthews last month and thought I would write up a quick review for anyone considering it. Overall it is a nice chuck, the set thru feature is nice to have, but mine needed some work to operate smoothly. I don't know if this is indicative of these...

www.hobby-machinist.com

Here's another review on the PM 5C collet chuck:

Which 5C Collect Chuck to go with?

I reading the post from @Ischgl99 on his tare down of his PM 5C Collect Chuck I was looking at this one as well for my Grizzly G0709. After reading that thread, I am wondering if I should go for it or just save up for the Bison 5C collect chuck with the D1-5 backplate mount... I then started...

www.hobby-machinist.com

 

[Ischgl99]

Here is @Ischgl99 review - unlike Clough42, at least he was able to get it apart. Looks kinda rough to me. I would still call PM and ask country of origin.

PM 5C Collet Chuck review

I purchased a 5C collet chuck from Precision Matthews last month and thought I would write up a quick review for anyone considering it. Overall it is a nice chuck, the set thru feature is nice to have, but mine needed some work to operate smoothly. I don't know if this is indicative of these...

www.hobby-machinist.com

Here's another review on the PM 5C collet chuck:

Which 5C Collect Chuck to go with?

I reading the post from @Ischgl99 on his tare down of his PM 5C Collect Chuck I was looking at this one as well for my Grizzly G0709. After reading that thread, I am wondering if I should go for it or just save up for the Bison 5C collect chuck with the D1-5 backplate mount... I then started...

www.hobby-machinist.com

Thank you for finding it. After fixing its shortcomings, it has worked well since then, but I still wish I had the money at the time for a Bison. I would be curious to find out which country it was manufactured in. There are not any country of origin markings on the chuck, instruction manual, or the box it came in, so I suspect China.

 

[verbotenwhisky]

Great stuff Dave, I always look forward to your posts.
I spotted one mistake at the top of page 9:



Pretty sure you meant "will be disappointing" - but it's not clear to me. Sounds like you are trying to say that using a $20 nut on a precision setup will lead to bad results. A great point - consider the whole setup as a system. I had never considered that a bad nut would push a good collet out of alignment.

Another thing I didn't see addressed (and perhaps it's a no-brainer for most people) is the ability to use long stock in the collet and keep feeding it out as you make multiple parts. I'm curious if there is much difference doing this with different collets or if it's more a matter of the machine/setup. In other words you only do this on a lathe so it's a non-starter with R8. Personal experience is that some ER holders do not provide for through hole stock. Do most lathe ER chucks/holders support through stock?

-Another Dave.

My Er40 Collet chuck allows for through chuck holding.

 

[mksj]

Having gone through four 5C chucks, my experience with the generic Chinese ones both regular and set true was that they all had significant issues and either returned or sold. I have used the PM set true and was a bit better. Would recommend it at the price point. Bison is much nicer but 3X the price, but I find it to be very accurate and repeating. 5C collets collapse at the front, but the clamping surface is much less than an ER40 collet.

I have both 5C and ER40 lathe chucks, l primarily use 5C for turning small stock. The main advantage is it can easily hold stock as short as 1/4" and less with a stop. Also close to the chuck work with your hands. ER40 I use more for odd size stock or more holding power. Always keep stock and collet clamping surface dry.

 

[Flynth]

Great comparison. Thank you. I too decided to standardise on ER40 collets when I first got into the hobby with a mini lathe and a bench top (grizzly G0758 clone) mill.

As many people choose the same machines let me give my 2 cents about my choice.

Both my mini lathe and my bench top mill have the same spindle taper - morse 3. Obtaining morse 3 to ER40 collet holders and making a simple drawbar for the lathe was very simple.

However, only later J truly discovered what precision both machines (especially the mini lathe) are capable of once I purchased a full set of morse 3 collets. They have an advantage of being in the actual spindle taper, not few inches in front (better TIR). The disadvantage is extremely low range of clamping(under a thou or so for good concentricity) . They come in millimeter increments. For a metric shop that's fine (no doubt there is an English units variant).

These days I even use morse 3 collets on my big mill that has iso40 (and iso30 in a vertical head) tapers. I bought iso40 and iso 30 to ER40 collets, but I find better rigidity and longer lasting carbide cutters by using iso40 to morse 3 with morse collets.

Also I ended up owning ER32 chucks and collets for my spin indexer, ER16 and collets for when one needs clearance of a narrower collet as well as ER8 and it's collets on a little Chinese CNC laser/router. So once you go ER40, you'll end up having all of them...

I'm still yet to get a proper collet setup for my big lathe. Unfortunately, it uses very uncommon spindle taper called "metric 40". It is not morse 4, but very close. For those curious about it. I found a single reference to these "metric tapers" distinct from morse tapers in a Polish popular science magazine from 1920. That's how old this "standard" is.

I plan to make some collet chuck for my big lathe. I could fit er32 comfortably within the taper or er40 half way in so probably, realistically ER40 would be in front of the taper.

 

[pontiac428]

ER and 5C are probably the most popular, but most of us also use Jacobs flex collets too. If not most, then at least half, when you consider they are used on other tooling like Tapmatic heads, routers, etc. I suppose it's just an extension of ER mechanics, but I consider them their own category.

 

[LEEQ]

The clamping range of metric ER 40 collets led me down the ER path. I have an mt2, an mt3, and an R8 collet holder. I have square and hex cullet blocks. The one that gets the most action is probably the d1-4 camlock set up for my 12-in lathe. It lets me pass material through the spindle. Between these devices I can use my collets in the tail stock and headstock of my mini lathe, the headstock and tail stock of my regular lathe as well as in a qctp holder. And of course in the Mill spindle. I also grabbed a little tube type ER collet holder. I think that's ER 11. It's for better clamping Force on the small stuff, and fits neatly inside a 12 mm er 40 collet. I admit freely that there are much nicer options as far as ease of closing collets, but the shear amount of things my ER collets let me get away with soothes my inner cheapskate.

 

[verbotenwhisky]

The clamping range of metric ER 40 collets led me down the ER path. I have an mt2, an mt3, and an R8 collet holder. I have square and hex cullet blocks. The one that gets the most action is probably the d1-4 camlock set up for my 12-in lathe. It lets me pass material through the spindle. Between these devices I can use my collets in the tail stock and headstock of my mini lathe, the headstock and tail stock of my regular lathe as well as in a qctp holder. And of course in the Mill spindle. I also grabbed a little tube type ER collet holder. I think that's ER 11. It's for better clamping Force on the small stuff, and fits neatly inside a 12 mm er 40 collet. I admit freely that there are much nicer options as far as ease of closing collets, but the shear amount of things my ER collets let me get away with soothes my inner cheapskate.

I have most of the same except I have a 15pc set of ER40 and 25pc ER32 collets...

 

[LEEQ]

I forgot about the rotary table slash dividing table. I'm pretty sure that has a three Morse taper, so I can use my collets on that too.

 

[GeneT45]

I am set up for ER-40 "everywhere" (quotes because it's not quite true...). I still use 5C collets in my single-lip cutter grinder - sometimes to hold an adapter for ER-25 collets...

Anyhoo, I wanted to mention / note that I picked up some Chinese ER-40 collets and a few of them are back-bored, such that the gripping surface is only the first ~15mm or so. I've never seen that style specifically advertised, but I really like them for shortening screws and other tasks because I can bury the screw head in the back of the collet. I haven't searched for them, but I assume it's an available feature, which might solve some of the issues of chucking short pieces in an ER collet. I don't recall checking the runout (specifically) but they've been accurate enough that I haven't had any issues with them.

GsT