I have a Steptoe No. 0 Horizontal milling machine with a B&S 9 taper spindle. Since both of my lathes (13" South Bend and a South Bend 10k) have MT3 spindles, I'd like to be able to use MT3 collets in the Steptoe for end milling. I can buy a B&S 9 to MT3 adapter from Grand Tool in NJ; however, I'm not sure whether this will work properly, or if I need to just pony up and buy B&S collets. My question is, how do you lock the MT3 collet into the B&S 9 to MT3 adapter? The drawbar would hold the adapter in, but I would think that I'd end up losing the end mill and collet once a side load was added while milling (similar to what happens in a drill press when people try use it as a mill). Am I missing something here? Is there a way that I'm not seeing to physically attach the MT3 into the B&S 9?
MT3 exist with drawbar-capable shanks, of course. One needs a #9 B&S 'host' adapter that is a plain-tailed sleeve so as to apply a drawbar directly and only to the MT 'guest'. The overall rig can end up akin to drinking Dutch pea soup through a dirty sock when time comes to change-it-out.
I limit meself to the tang-style MT adapters instead. Provides a seldom-used 'capability' to mount a Jacobs drill chuck that happens to be on a MT 3 or MT 2 - more for when I actually NEED long stick-out to get down inside a box-shape or such than otherwise.
Then try hard to just DON'T use such.
For milling? What you want for easily-hung-in-the-taper #9 B&S milling isn't really even #9 B&S collets, let alone adapted MT.
More better to utilize side-lock milling cutter HOLDERS wherever possible, and then... mount a modern ER system or TG system on a shop fabbed (or modified) #9 tail. Those do taps and drills really well, too.
Re-use of MT goods off other machines just comes at too high an operating and nuisance cost to recover the purchase price of better - and long-term DURABLE - alternatives that have flooded the mass (CNC) market and gone serious affordable to all-comers as a byproduct of that.
Most especially as either of ER or TG have bitchin' great grip from a rather modest number of collet sizes, given their wide(er) effective 'collapse' ranges. And one can afford to keep spares on-hand.
Both being advantages neither MT collets nor B&S collets had on their best days, let alone with current scarce - and still declining - count of stocking sources.
Fit for decent grip with either has to be with in a mere FEW thousandths, not a half (TG) or full (ER) millimeter (right close to forty-thou in real measurements, a 'millimeter' is IIRC?).
Bill
