Cheap and Cheerful 5C Collet Chuck

A few months ago I purchased a 5C collet chuck for my workshop. I've been eyeing them for awhile and I finally found one. It was very inexpensive (sub $150) but I'm surprised how accurate it is, for what it is. If you are looking at getting one I do recommend you purchase a plain back version - even if your lathe has a camlock spindle as it allows for dialing the collet chuck in.

Many thanks to my wife for the music for this video.

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Transcript:

[0:00] This is a new import 5C collet chuck for the home shop. Is it any good? Is it worthy to be here? We’ll find out. Let’s get it mounted.
[1:40] -

[2:32] -There is a lot of hate over the internet for this style of spindle – it definitely doesn’t have the convenience of a camlock nose, but I don’t really mind it all that much and I actually greatly prefer it to threaded spindle noses. There is some play between the register on the face of the lathe spindle and the one on the back of the plain 5C collet chuck. That’s actually a helpful thing – it allows you to tap the collet chuck into alignment. I do that with the 3 jaw as well on this lathe. If that doesn’t sit well with you I’d like to remind you it’s good enough for Stefan so I’ll let you argue with the German. Viel Glück. Seriously for home shop work it’s an acceptable compromise. I don’t take heavy enough cuts to move the chuck anyway.
[3:11] - Now there is a word of caution perhaps when buying these chucks. I’d recommend you get a plain back one – even if you have a camlock spindle nose, and make or buy a separate backing plate. By separating the chuck from the mount you have an easier avenue to adjusting for possible manufacturing errors. If it is all one piece with the camlock studs directly integrated, the only way to fix the collet chuck is to regrind the taper. So let’s mount this chuck up on the 10x18 import and dial it in and take a few measurements to see how it will do in the home shop.
[3:52] - Right now there is about .002” runout. That’s not acceptable. So I’ve left these cap screws loose, I’m just going to tap it with a dead blow hammer until I can get that as low as possible. So here I’ve got it down to about .0005” runout. Maybe a little bit less. So for the type of work I do on this lathe that’s pretty good. So I’m going to tighten it down and then I’m going to put a test bar in here and we’ll measure the runout on a test bar being held in a collet.
[4:43] - So I put in a 5/16 import collet in here and I’ve chucked up a reamer with a 5/16” shank. I’m just indicating the runout basically right up next to the collet. And it’s showing about a .001”, which for what I do in this shop is pretty good. These collets could be out that much.
[5:02] - Next up is to mount the collet chuck on the Standard Modern. That requires an adapter plate – the standard modern is a D1-3 camlock. Now I’m not a huge D1 camlock fan. The taper on the nose is exceptionally short. And This Standard Modern uses the smallest of the camlock bunch – which probably makes it a little bit worse. It still is plenty good for me though. I was going to make a backing plate, seems to be a big hit for YouTube videos for some reason, but by the time I added up the cost of the cast iron and buying the studs I was well over what a purchased one cost. The purchased backplate didn’t have tapped holes for the collet chuck so I set it up in the mill, centered with a dial indicator and used my DRO to layout the holes.
[8:56] We did the same setup as the import lathe here on the Standard Modern and we are getting the same readings. It’s about a .001” maybe a little bit less than a .001”. Again this is an import collet. I don’t have a Hardinge collet to test it. And these are just standard accuracy I didn’t buy high accuracy ones. They were actually a gift, a Christmas gift from a family member. So overall I’m very happy with this 5C collet chuck. The finish on it is really good. The accuracy is acceptable for a home shop. Is it a Bison – no I don’t think so. Granted I’ve never actually used a Bison in my shop so I don’t know how accurate they are out of the box. But for the type of work I do in the home shop if it is within a .001” fairly close – typical collet chuck type work. That’s doing really well. If I need more accuracy I can always put the 4 jaw chuck on here or look at ways to tweak this even more accurate. Perhaps higher precision collets. I hope to be making some parts with this thing shortly. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

Видео Cheap and Cheerful 5C Collet Chuck канала thecogwheel