5C collet chucks

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I am considering the purchase of a 5C collet chuck.

There are the budget priced ones of circa 150 beer vouchers then there seems to be a jump to 400 ish for a Bison one

I then have to fit a D1-3 backplate with will be about another £100 - I know you can get them in a ready D1-3 fitting, but I prefer the idea of a separate backplate. My reasoning behind this is that if I ever change my lathe away to one with a different fitting I don't then have to loose all my chucks. I just will need new backplates.

So my question is has anyone used on a regular basis one of the economically priced ones. And if so how accurate and consistent are they.? Or is it once again "you get what you pay for" and one needs to pay handsomely.

Regards, Nick

Why 5C? Why not an ER40 (for instance)?
Just interested in your reasoning.

graham.

Hello Nick.

I bought a new "budget" 5C collet chuck several years ago, I cannot remember if it was from Chronos, Rotagrip or Warco, but I did buy the collets from Warco.

I also bought a plain type chuck and fitted a separate D1-4 backplate. The very finely ground 5C chuck was low priced at around £100 back then, and even the chuck key main body and tee bar had both been precision ground between centres.

I have not used it for quite a long while, but if I get time tonight or maybe tomorrow I will fit the chuck to my 1330 lathe and check its accuracy and let you know. However, the Warco 1330 lathe I have has the not uncommon problem found on some low priced new Chinese lathes with Camlock spindles, which is the tapers mating up well before the flat mating faces of spindle and backplate do.

This can cause chucks to be pulled up out of line, which might be why I stopped using it until I got round to sorting out the fit of the backplate on the spindle, anyway I will take a look. But the 5C chuck is very well made and operates very smoothly, although for the past few years I have been using ER type collet chucks as they have a better gripping range on Metric and Imperial including undersized bar, and are much less bulky with the work closer to the spindle.

Edited By Lathejack on 30/04/2015 22:26:48

Edited By Lathejack on 30/04/2015 22:29:31

Edited By Lathejack on 30/04/2015 22:30:31

I have 2 of those budget 5C chucks, one on my 1330 lathe and the other on my WM250, I had similar problem to lathejack with the fitting of the camlock on the GH1330 but once that was sorted by re-machining the taper in what was quite an out of spec backplate, the chuck mounted fine and has undetectable runout, Same applies on the other lathe. I buy collets mainly from Warco and have found them to be of good quality, I have a large range of both imperial and metric collets so can cover pretty much any bar size I need, The advantage I found is being able to use square and hex collets which are not available in the ER type.

(deleted).

Sorry wrong thread - darned tabbed browsing.

Edited By Bandersnatch on 30/04/2015 22:39:40

I bought one from ArcEuroTrade. I don't use it on the lathe as I have a set of Burnerd multisize collets, instead I bought it for use on the CNC 4th axis. I machined a backplate from a lump of hot rolled steel. If I recall TIR at the end of a 330mm length of silver steel in a 25mm collet was less than 0.05mm, largely due to alignment of the rotary table:

Perfectly acceptable for my application.

Andrew

I was going to go with an ER32 flange mounted jobbie and then got offered one of these chucks at a very good price, infact it just cost me a myford backplate to swap so could not really say no.

I did like John said and tried it on a couple of trued bars and found it was a bit out so turned down a bit of 1 1/8" bar to 1" and then mounted the chuck on that wrong way round and used a tipped tool to just skim the register and mounting face true. Then made the backplate in the usual way, good enough for my needs.

I got a set of 1/32 increment collets and a few sq and hex ones and if its on there and I want to hold another size then I have the 5C to ER32 adaptor.

Only advantage of a direct mounting one is it puts the chuck closer to the spindle bearings. The chuck key tightening is better than two hands to do up a ER holder.

Edited By JasonB on 01/05/2015 07:36:25

I have one of the cheaper 5C chucks, although not with the split line that Bogs mentions. Mine runs very true indeed and gets used a lot, more than the 3 jaw in fact. The great advantage I find is the ability to grip short lengths - something which ER collets struggle with.

John

Thanks for the replies guy's.

John. I have bought and used a backplate of that price bracket. It's about as much use as a chocolate fire guard. It never goes back on exactly the same,, even though I line up the marks I made on it to ensure it goes back onto the spindle on the same index.

It's now used on an independent 4 jaw so it's not a major issue. Perhaps I was just unlucky and got one manufactured on a Monday morning after Beijing city FC had lost that weekend.

Nick

Apologies for resurrecting this thread but MSC are doing an Interstate 5C collet Chuck and I wondered if anyone had any experience regarding quality. I currently have an Arceurotrade 5C but have unfortunately not had a good experience. Having bought the chuck and then subsequently moved and had to reestablish the workshop I was unable to return it. The outside surface visibly wobbles despite having machined and clocked two backplates and re drilled one of them twice. The same issue remains and the collets when clocked inevitably follow the same pattern. I am needing a collet chuck facility given the engines and work I am doing and don’t wish to throw good money after bad. A bison is probably out of my reach - any comments on the Interstate which is currently on offer.

Andy, try doing what I did as mentioned in my post above. Mine was a Warco customer return and now runs fine.

Many thanks Jason didn’t spot that above - will give it a try.

I bought a cheap Chinese 5C chuck via eBay several years ago, I think it was about between seventy or eighty-quid back then. Can't fault it. Nicely ground finish, closes the collets in truth and perfectly acceptable for home workshop use. The collets I use are Crawford that I bought at an auction but I can't think that cheaper collets would be any less accurate.

Andy_C

I also have found Jasons method to true the base works well.

Make sure the collet stays nice and tight if you need another cut or two. Usual rules :- if you check it will be tight, if you don't it will slack off just enough to upset things when almost done.

It might be prudent to make the trued up supporting bar long enough to have a centre drill hole put in the end so it can be supported by the tailstock centre. A great help in keeping things stable should the chuck material prove a to be a bit on the obdurate side. Extra support helps you take a proper cut too. I'm not a fan of uber fine cuts when trimming true. Tool needs a few thou to get nicely into the job.

A sufficiently similar job involved getting through a case hardened skin before machining to size so I arranged internal support at the cutting end too. Which took some creativity to retain alignment. Job went fine. Albeit the first cut to shift the hardening gave a fine fireworks display and killed an insert edge.

Clive

Duplicated

Edited By Clive Foster on 16/02/2022 23:45:28

I trued up a friends new lathe gear, buy just chucking up a piece, and skim the area where the jaws clamp. The bar was skimmed with the tail stock support in place. I used a marker pen to keep the keep the centre and the bar end on about the same radial position. The chuck is tightened on the marked key when the tail stock is in place. I skimmed the face and had to turn the taper register too. Same with the 4 jaw chuck, and then used the 4 jaw to correct the face plate. It was a D1-5 with 6 pins. A quite unusual size. Now his chucks run very well.

My experience with 5c collets is that you get what you pay for. Hardinge make a precision series that are very good. Some cheap ones I got , were rubbish in comparison for concentricity and holding parts true. The emergency collets are great though. You bore them out to the size you want, and will always be concentric in that spindle or adapter. They come in steel, Brass, and even Delrin.

Neil

I was looking for an ER chuck to fit my spindle nose but didn't like the prices. Fortunately my searching awoke the sleeping China beast and out of the blue an Amazon offer arrived this morning. MT5 ER40 for £45 quid including VAT and free shipping.

Now you have to tell me where I could have bought it for £20 with a full set of collets. Don't spare the rod I need to be punished

I would always go for ER collets over 5C as 5C collets only fit one nominal size, Robin maybe has a good buy for £20 but I prefer back plate mounted collets so you can hold long bars & through spindle parts, just my opinion.

Tony

I like the 5C as you can hold very short work which would need a back plug if using ER plus it's a one handed job to tighten rather than two spanners needed with ER. Also you can use a backstop and they fit straight into my spin indexer and 5C blocks. Then there are the square and hex collets as well as emergency if you have a need for something specific. To me all these outweigh the one size per collet issue.

Fot that also have a 5C to ER converter so can always use that if I have an odd size to hold

Edited By JasonB on 17/02/2022 13:00:59

I bought a Bison 5c chuck with a D1-3 backplate and a set of metric Bison collets. One of the best workshop purchases I have made recently. The chuck is very accurate and holds work with runout of around 0.01mm. It gets more use than anticpiated in my workshop. Highly recommended.

Edited By lfoggy on 17/02/2022 13:55:44