Tips For Diy Collet Chuck

I am planning on making a collet chuck also. I plan to make 2, one for my Atlas mill and one for my Craftsman lathe. After reading mattthemuffet's build I plan to make one with a piece of 2" square steel I have and one with some hex stock. That way I can use them for a cheap indexer. I have er32 collets and the nut is just under 2". Not sure of the nut size for er40. It is most likely metric thread and that is what is slowing me down now. I have a qcgb and need to get additional gears for that and also add reverse to my lathe to do metric threading.
 
Funny, I was working on designing an ER40 collet chuck for my lathe today.
I decided that instead of mounting it on the face like a regular chuck, I would put it in the MT5 taper and use a draw tube to pull the collet holder into the headstock.
So far it looks like it will work just fine. About half the ER collet will be inside the MT collet.
I have a 1.5" bore, so the draw tube will be easily larger than the largest ER40 collet, so I don't lose any ability to pass material through the headstock.
It has the downside of requiring two precise tapers.
It has the up side of having both far lower rotational mass and better mass distribution.
A much high degree of repeatable concentricity
Much cheaper to make.
Probably easier to make an MT5 taper, than a D1-4 mount.
 
Rob said:
I am planning on making a collet chuck also. I plan to make 2, one for my Atlas mill and one for my Craftsman lathe. After reading mattthemuffet's build I plan to make one with a piece of 2" square steel I have and one with some hex stock. That way I can use them for a cheap indexer. I have er32 collets and the nut is just under 2". Not sure of the nut size for er40. It is most likely metric thread and that is what is slowing me down now. I have a qcgb and need to get additional gears for that and also add reverse to my lathe to do metric threading.
Click to expand...

The ER32 collet nut should be 40mmx1.5
Just finished making my second one for my SB9A, the first was made from aluminum because it was what I had at the time and it has worked fine for a few years.
The second one is made from steel--no idea what kind though:D
 
I found a good price on 1215 hex bar stock. Would 1215 be a good steel to use? They claim it to be free machining, but I've never used it.

I will be using hex bar stock for the reasons provided in a few posts up. Plus I figure it would make removing the chuck from the spindle easier with a big wrench.
 
boostin53 said:
I found a good price on 1215 hex bar stock. Would 1215 be a good steel to use? They claim it to be free machining, but I've never used it.

I will be using hex bar stock for the reasons provided in a few posts up. Plus I figure it would make removing the chuck from the spindle easier with a big wrench.
Click to expand...

That will work.

Tom S.
 
Hi
There are loads of videos on youtube for ER collet chucks 32 40

This is one from a great guy, if you can understand him LOL:grin:

 
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You'll understand John better without the subtitles... Cottage Cheese? Joke art machinist?

Taken really cute.

Dave H. (the other one)
 
doubleboost on youtube has a good video making a ER collet chuck
I used his basic design for my ER40 chuck I used my pencil grinder as a id grinder
I did use 4140
 
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