Three Vs. Four Slit Collets?

[Andre]

I will shortly be building a #0MT collet for my Craftsman 109, for 3/8" Delrin parts. While planning out slitting for collet crush I was wondering the difference in performance of three vs four slit collets? All the collets for my mill and other lathe have three slits, while Dremel collets and the collets I made for my watchmakers lathe (yes, STILL working on it) have four slits and seem to work.

It seems as though four slits would be faster to manufacture. Only having two rotations instead of three in the setup would seem to reduce cycle time and to some limited extent, reduce costs and/or time; so there must be an advantage to having three slits if manufacturers are going the extra length. Or am I just grossly overthinking things?

Three and four slit collets (For square bored collets it's evident): http://www.kanabco.com/vms/Media/lathe_collets/many_shapes.jpg

 

[RJSakowski]

In my experience 3 slit collets seem to center better than 4 slit collets. This has been on collets for small pins, drills, etc. as in a pin vise though. I would expect if the collet diameter closely matches the diameter of the part or tool, it probably would not make too much of a difference.