I've been thinking of getting a set of collets for work holding in a lathe but the choices are so many I can't decide. Of course, the idea being that I find what works best for a general purpose home shop with the least amount of investment and clutter. I like simple (In-n-Out burger menu style lol). Here're my random thoughts, please feel free to correct/add etc:
5c - I keep thinking this has been the defacto standard so just buy this and be done with it. They have collet blocks, lathe chucks and most spindexers etc readily accept 5c. The chuck is the most expensive part but again buy once cry once sorta thing. On the flip side, the chuck sticks out quite a bit more than the ER chucks and the workholding supposedly isn't as strong nor tolerant to small variances in the stock diameter compared to the ER chucks.
ER - I use ER20 on my mill but I'll likely have to step up to ER40 to get in the bigger range. Fairly inexpensive, I can get a MT3 chuck that will fit my lathe's spindle bore. On the negative side I hear you can't hold stock with very small length as they like to grip a longer length. Also they won't fit in a spindexer (not that I've used mine yet but I like future protection/versatility). Lastly collet blocks while I've seen them are not as widely available either.
MT3 collets - another option here for my lathe's spindle bore but again if I trade up to a bigger lathe some day the MT3 might not be the correct spindle bore size. I can actually just buy one say 3/4" and that will hold my ER20 collet holders which I can use for anything from 1/2" and under. A total of $15 investment lol
Drill chuck - MT3 drill chuck is what I've used with decent success but may be I've just been lucky in that I haven't run into issues...mainly people say chucks are not designed for radial loads.
Other options - I was thinking I could just get the 5c collet blocks and 5c collets and use the three jaw chuck to hold the blocks, sure not very quick if your'e removing parts on and off but it could work without needing a 5c specific chuck.
Thoughts, suggestions?
5c - I keep thinking this has been the defacto standard so just buy this and be done with it. They have collet blocks, lathe chucks and most spindexers etc readily accept 5c. The chuck is the most expensive part but again buy once cry once sorta thing. On the flip side, the chuck sticks out quite a bit more than the ER chucks and the workholding supposedly isn't as strong nor tolerant to small variances in the stock diameter compared to the ER chucks.
ER - I use ER20 on my mill but I'll likely have to step up to ER40 to get in the bigger range. Fairly inexpensive, I can get a MT3 chuck that will fit my lathe's spindle bore. On the negative side I hear you can't hold stock with very small length as they like to grip a longer length. Also they won't fit in a spindexer (not that I've used mine yet but I like future protection/versatility). Lastly collet blocks while I've seen them are not as widely available either.
MT3 collets - another option here for my lathe's spindle bore but again if I trade up to a bigger lathe some day the MT3 might not be the correct spindle bore size. I can actually just buy one say 3/4" and that will hold my ER20 collet holders which I can use for anything from 1/2" and under. A total of $15 investment lol
Drill chuck - MT3 drill chuck is what I've used with decent success but may be I've just been lucky in that I haven't run into issues...mainly people say chucks are not designed for radial loads.
Other options - I was thinking I could just get the 5c collet blocks and 5c collets and use the three jaw chuck to hold the blocks, sure not very quick if your'e removing parts on and off but it could work without needing a 5c specific chuck.
Thoughts, suggestions?