Hi all. First time posting in the forum, but I've been lurking here quite a bit over the years.
I just bought my first mill- a Reed Prentice Becker No.3. It's a neat little machine and I got it for a pretty good price (or so i thought...)
I knew collets would be kind of difficult to find, but it came with a few so I was ok with waiting for some 3B's to pop up on ebay. Luckily, i found two collets within a week of having the machine set up in my garage, but when I got the first one in the mail yesterday I was in for a surprise... IT DIDN'T FIT! The small end wouldn't even make it past the taper in the spindle nose. I double checked the collet dimensions on hardinge's website and it's definitely as advertised, and was made for this machine, but it's just too big.
I went back and did the sharpie test on the collets that came with the machine, and immediately started kicking myself because none of them truly fit the taper (only about 1/8" of contact). It looks like at some point in the machine's lifetime the spindle was either reground or replaced. Either that, or it takes different collets than what my research suggests? Does anybody have any more info i may not know about? The drawbar is threaded differently from the 3B collet as well
I have a buddy a few states over who has offered to turn my spindle to fit r8's for a reasonable price if i send it to him (assuming there's enough material to take off). Is there any reason i should second guess this approach? I trust him to do a good job (he's been machining professionally for a long time) but I have a gut feeling that tells me I'm over looking something. I'm wide open to suggestions if anyone has any other ideas for solutions
Thanks for reading!
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
I just bought my first mill- a Reed Prentice Becker No.3. It's a neat little machine and I got it for a pretty good price (or so i thought...)
I knew collets would be kind of difficult to find, but it came with a few so I was ok with waiting for some 3B's to pop up on ebay. Luckily, i found two collets within a week of having the machine set up in my garage, but when I got the first one in the mail yesterday I was in for a surprise... IT DIDN'T FIT! The small end wouldn't even make it past the taper in the spindle nose. I double checked the collet dimensions on hardinge's website and it's definitely as advertised, and was made for this machine, but it's just too big.
I went back and did the sharpie test on the collets that came with the machine, and immediately started kicking myself because none of them truly fit the taper (only about 1/8" of contact). It looks like at some point in the machine's lifetime the spindle was either reground or replaced. Either that, or it takes different collets than what my research suggests? Does anybody have any more info i may not know about? The drawbar is threaded differently from the 3B collet as well
I have a buddy a few states over who has offered to turn my spindle to fit r8's for a reasonable price if i send it to him (assuming there's enough material to take off). Is there any reason i should second guess this approach? I trust him to do a good job (he's been machining professionally for a long time) but I have a gut feeling that tells me I'm over looking something. I'm wide open to suggestions if anyone has any other ideas for solutions
Thanks for reading!
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk