What's new
What's new

ER40 Collet Chuck Fixtures

speerchucker30x3

Titanium
Joined
Feb 15, 2011
Location
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
For all the kids that have been PATIENTLY waiting, Jeff at tools for cheep FINALLY got those fool, ER40 collet plate/chucks in. I think he has them made up in batch's or only orders them once a year. He is out of ER40 collets at this time so you will have to get them elsewhere. I ordered a similar product from Gloster in the UK but it has a 4 inch diameter back plate and wont fit on a lot of machines without some serious Kanadian Kustomizing and I was all out of duct tape. I think they were designed for spindle noses smaller than 1.5 inch. Also the nose of the Gloster model is furnace brazed into the mounting plate before machining which I suppose is fine but the ones from T4C are one piece.
 
I found the DIN standards and made up a couple of these for use around the shop. Much handier at times than a 5c collet block with more range.... and not that difficult to make if you can do the metric thread for the nut.
 
For all the kids that have been PATIENTLY waiting, Jeff at tools for cheep FINALLY got those fool, ER40 collet plate/chucks in. I think he has them made up in batch's or only orders them once a year. He is out of ER40 collets at this time so you will have to get them elsewhere. I ordered a similar product from Gloster in the UK but it has a 4 inch diameter back plate and wont fit on a lot of machines without some serious Kanadian Kustomizing and I was all out of duct tape. I think they were designed for spindle noses smaller than 1.5 inch. Also the nose of the Gloster model is furnace brazed into the mounting plate before machining which I suppose is fine but the ones from T4C are one piece.

I am just about to order 2 of them. 1 for me and 1 for a mate. I had not heard of them till you mentioned then in a post speerchucker. They are certainly not common Australia. Emailed jeff 2weeks ago, nice guy to deal with. Very helpful.
 
He he he he he. Yeah, I placed a $600.00 order with Jeff on Saturday which included 2 more of the ER40 collet plates and an ER32 plate so I waited until today when shipping was confirmed before I told anyone they had come in. I'm not really a nice person. lol I actually sold my Bison 5C chuck a while back to a buddy of mine. The Bison was a pain in the butt.
I had to turn the key 20 or 30 times to remove the collet to change it or clear chips that migrated into it and when reaming muzzle brakes that’s quite often as the chips flow through the ports of the brakes straight into the cuts on the collets.
The ER's and 5C's both run about .0005 to .001 axially on cold rolled material but the ER's run a lot better lineally over 5 inch's for drilling, reaming and threading. Plus the ER's close much tighter and material does not slip. They also have a much wider closing range of 1mm or 0.039370 inch where 5C's must be almost nuts on to material size to close accurately and tightly.
ER collets seam to be a lot more common on lathes for work holding in Europe than they are here. Most of that is probably due to the fact that they were designed in 1973 by REGO-FIX as tool holding collets and it has just taken this long for people to bastardize the principals and start using them for work holding. I don't think I personally even saw an ER collet until about 1990. I suppose the plates are easy enough to make but for $56.00 for the plate and closing nut, I just can't make them that cheap or even bother to try.


ADD NOTE: Yeah Jeff is good to deal with and his outfit seams to hustle too. He has special ordered a couple items for me and his regular orders get to me in about a week, some times less and that's crossing borders from Harvard Massachusetts USA to Edmonton Alberta Canada. I can't get that kind of service here in the city.
 
I am impressed you know who made the er system. :)not tiping at of people on here would not knowingly that. I use er collets in the cnc and manual mill every day but have never seen them used on lathes. Dont blame you for selling the 5c. Lol. Will be getting one on a morse for the tail stock as well. I can see jeff getting lots of cash from me.
 
I had trouble getting drills and taps to run dead true in the MT3 tailstocks when making muzzle brakes. I used to drill with Jacobs chucks and drive the taps with a Tapmatic reversing head. I was getting up to .005 run out on breaks from end to end on completion. At a machinist friends suggestion I changed from 5C's to ER40s for work holding and I tossed the tapping head and drove the drills and taps ridged in MT3 collets. It solved the problem totally. I then switched to ER40s in the tailstock with no drop in accuracy. I ordered a set of ER32s for the mill because they were smaller in diameter and figured they would allow me to sneak closer to the vise. I soon began using them in the tailstock of the lathe for all my tool holding. I just ordered 2 more full sets of ER32 collets with 4 more ER32 chucks. I have been using them for a year now and I'm certainly sold on them for tool holding in the tailstock. I even drive large chamber reamers with them. But I still float the barrel a bit. I trust them but I don't trust anything completely. 2nd photo LOL Make sure you make screw in stubs for the back of your ER chucks or you may not be able to get them out of your tailstock. I made that mistake once and had to wind out the tailstock spindle and pop it out with a long punch. ONCE ! first photo

Actually I read some where that ER collets were known as something else originally. I tried to Google it but came up with nothing.

Gunsmith Rod Henrickson ER Collets.jpgRod Henrickson setup2.jpg
 
Thanks for the tip with the stub in the back. Was wondering about how well they would eject. I have shown a machinist mate your picks of er work and reamer holding. Hence we are both getting them. I am planing my first chambering job using the collets fixture. Not sure if I will hold reamer in collets chuck or push with centre. Do like collets idea tho.....
 
Mari has MT3 ER (32 and 40) chucks with a tang on them. Makes me feel a lot better about not spinning one and scoring the tailstock.

Thought somewhere I'd seen one with a removable tang, and planned to make a tanged plug if all I could find was one for a drawbar.
 
I made a bunch of those types of plugs wesg. Just take a bunch of 3/8x16 bolts and put them in the mill and slab the sides off of the heads. If you need them longer just crush a nut or two up to the base of the bolt and mill the two together. I use them if I use drills over 3/4 inch just to be safe. I rough cut them on a #36 snag on the Baldor belt sander and then make the clean up cut on the mill. Much quicker.
 
Yeah, my last order came in a couple weeks back. I got a couple more sets of ER32 collets and four ER 40xMT3 chucks. I also got 2 more ER40 plates. One for the new machine (when money allows it this fall) and one as a spare. I also ordered one of the ER 32 plates for the C1 can opener but I haven't even had time to pull the plastic off yet.

The first ER40 plate I got runs .001 to .0015 inch or so on cold roll and under .0005 on drill rod which is pretty much as good as it gets. I checked the first one for run out when I got it before I installed it and came to the conclusion that I couldn't true it up any better than it came. I made a new back plate and screwed it on and off 20 or 30 times and then witness marked it and and cut it to size. After pulling it off I triple checked it and froze the back plate and heated the collet plate and the two literally fell together. Cast iron shrinks a lot with cold. I used the holes provided in the plate as a guide and drilled the back plate and installed the bolts.

The ER32 plate will require some modifications to make it work on the little C1 but I am going to make it adjustable as the chuck plate is integral to the headstock spindle on those little toy machines and I want to leave it original so that I can put the chuck back on if the need arises. Its simple to do and I will just cut the recess .020 inch over size and put in four 8x40 screws to align it.
 
Hey there speerchucker. I dont 'hard mount' any chucks these days. Cut a .040 to. 060 "mr register and. 040" clearance on bolt holes. Put bellville washers behind bolt heads. This allows you to tap chuck to zero runnout. Great for 3 jaw chucks if you need to clock ip a pre turned part that may be a bit out. Example shaft with a thread you need to pick up and extend.
 
Speedchucker,
I picked up one of these along with a few other items. My intent was to mount to a d1-4 backplate but I'm now considering converting the flange on the fixture chuck to a d1 mount. The adaptor plate turned out to be a p.o.s.
Did you have any issue machining or taping the fixture itself?

winston
 
I don't believe there is enough material to convert it to D1 4 and on top of that getting the alignment even close would be a nightmare for even a very skilled machinist and the back should be ground not lathe turned. I would buy a back plate from Grizzly or tools for cheep and go that wrought. I often do things the hard way but I draw the line at ludicrous. If down the road the plate some how started to run out you could pull it off the back plate and undersize the male on the plate and then bang in the collet plate to zero as mentioned above. I never machined the collet plate at all when I installed it. I machined a 1 inch piece of material and locked the chuck plate on it and checked it for run out. It was so close I didn't figure I could improve it so I machined a back plate and bolted it on.
 
I have bought a couple backplates one from jeff and another vendor and both of the d1 mounts need re-work, even the taper is rough turned.
I may need to step it up and buy some better quality.
 
The D1 4 plates I have worked with have all been spindle ready on the back except for the cam pins. After giving it some thought it shouldn't be any trouble to cut the back although I think I would just buy them pre-ground rather than lathe cut them.
 
OK, I think I need a little more help/guidance/pictures of how you get this mounted on a D1-4 backplate. I finally had time to work on it and I might have it all jacked up right now.
 
Well its no different than fitting any chuck. Mount the back plate to the machine, takeing it off and on a few times while knocking it in lightly each time with a rawhide mallet or babbitt to seat it. After 5 or 6 times it's probably seated properly and will return to zero each time. Then take a light facing cut off the face plate to true it. You have to measure your new chuck and acquire measurements (C) and (D). Its best to measure it several times and make sure you have it right. To get measurement (B) for your back plate take measurement (C) and subtract .015 inch for clearance. Measurements (D) and (A) should be exactly the same size. When you make the (A) and (B) cuts on the back plate there should be a slight relief cut made so the corners don't bunch up. You will find that your two parts probably will not go together (well they shouldn't if you got it right). Put the back plate in the freezer (not fridge) for about an hour to shrink it. Then warm the new chuck so that water will dance on it which will be about 200 degrees F. The old school crutch to remember shrink and expansion is (ZERO's 12345 and 6 by 1) which means. With steel or grey cast one square inch of material will expand or contract .000006 of one inch for every degree of temperature change in Fahrenheit over each inch of material you have. So in a nutshell when you freeze your back plate it will shrink about .0015 and when you heat your chuck so that water dances it will expand almost .002. With one frozen and the other warm the two parts should drop together. If they do hold them there until they normalize. If not you may have to take another thousandth off of (A). Once stuck together its just a matter of drilling the pilot holes from the chuck side and then flipping it over and enlarging them to the bolt size and installing the bolts. Some guys will cut (A) undersized and then install the bolts and lightly tighten them and then install the new chuck in the machine and knock it in nuts on with a piece of babbitt and a dial indicator and then final tighten the bolts. That works fine too. I prefer to do it the first way if it's possible.

Gunsmith Rod Henrickson Chuck Plate.jpg
 








 
Back
Top