Another chuck plate

[petertha]

Nothing fancy but hopefully useful. I've kind of settled on 5" diameter (Gator) chucks for my smaller 'tooling' needs on rotary table & mill or swinging back & forth from lathe for that matter.

Here is the plate I machined to hold round things on the mill. Using 3/8" cap screws I can bolt the plate to the mill Tee's in several positions. I made it a bit slimmer in the Y-direction so I can hold it on parallels in my 5" jaw mill vise & saves a vise knockdown. Its made from MIC-6 ground & cast aluminum cut-off remnant. Maybe not the toughest but seems to be quite accurate & was easy to machine. I just have to be careful about storing it & not banging it around.

 

[petertha]

Forgot to show this pic. The little chuck combo gives me pretty good headroom even in the vise. I think I have another 3-4" to raise head from here.

 

[682bear]

I have a setup similar to that that will hang off the edge of the mill table... I have used it 3 times to open up fixed chokes in shotgun barrels.



It works very well...

-Bear

 

[petertha]

Good one. You know I was thinking at the time when I made the plate - I should probably drill the hole pattern for the 4-jaw chuck back plate pattern while its already set up for the the 3-jaw (they are different). Then I thought Naw.. why? If I have a square part then why would I chuck it? I'd just put it in the mill vise. Well, your application, or irregular parts, or... might be good reasons. Oh well. It can still be done, just would have been easier at the time.