Hello and a question to start with

Hello - Ian Macafee - and I hope to learn from this forum and, who knows, maybe contribute as well. I was inspired to look here as I have acquired a partly restored Boxford lathe and began spending some more time on projects and..

I have a circa 1940's Huddersfield origin drill press which is great except the MT drill chuck to spindle mating is not so good and chuck tends to slip or fall off. There is very little sign of gross scoring or damage and I was interested to know if anyone could provide some advice on how I could repair this. Ideas will be gratefully received.

Regards

Ian

Welcome along Ian, can you give a bit more info re size of Morse Taper and your rough location. Someone close may have a Morse Taper reamer to clean up your spindle. If not they are reasonable cost to buy.

Is the chuck falling off the Jacobs taper or the morse taper falling out of its socket?

If the former, keyed chucks can be secured with a screw.

Morse tapers would have to be badly scored or damaged for them not to lock together, it might be worth checking the spindle by bluing with another Morse arbour. If the existing chuck runs true anyway the simplest fix would be to use superglue (or a Loctite) to retain it.

Drill press chuck rarely need to be taken out and put back in so gluing it in place might be a good workaround. Sounds rough, but is practical.

Ian P

Light application of the approriate Morse taper reamer by hand ( not under power !) to the spindle socket.

Morse taper socket reamers are available from the likes of RDG Tools, Tracy Tools or like this pair (2MT roughing & finishing reamers) eBay item number:292268853192 for just under £20 delivered. Same seller has 1MT (bit cheaper) and 3MT (a couple of pounds more). You would probably only require the finishing reamer from the pair (the straight sided one) for a light touch-up, lubricated with something like Rocol RTD fluid..

Nigel B.

Before buying a reamer I think it would make sense to establish whether its the arbour or the socket that are causing the problem. The OP stated the socket has little sign of damage so it could be possible the arbour is manufactured badly.

Ian P

Dear All

Many thanks for your replies to me post and I very much appreciate the guidance. I have replied to each author and (now) realise that here at the bottom of the page is the correct way for me to reply openly to the thread. Sorry therefore for adding individual messages to your inboxes. Now sorted!

I owned up to mis-identifying the taper. Its not MT but almost certainly 33JT for the Jacobs chuck. The chuck female fits on the spindle male taper.

I have blued up the chuck/arbour, seen some chuck local damage and dressed that. I then cleaned it up and used Loctite to help the fit. We will see how it goes but I can imagine this will be good.

By the way I looked to see if 33JT reamers were available and di not find any. Hopefully I won't need to look any further.

I appreciate the quick and considered response. Good to meet you all.

Regards

Ian

Glad you sorted it Ian. Your chuck body is probably hardened so I doubt that a JT33 reamer would have helped anyway. I have also resorted to Loctite to make sure a chuck doesn't come off the taper - I don't see why it isn't a perfectly good engineering solution.

A chuck that won't stay on its taper is obviously of no use and any solution is better than none. I found a paragraph in my 1966 edition of the Loctite Design Handbook headed "Adding adhesives to splines and tapers" which seemed promising; however, the text seemed to be concerned with joints where play is present between the components (which may have been present in the OP's case but certainly should not have been).

The Handbook also say that the bond in tapered overlap joints can be "very good".

I have always addressed this problem where possible by the screw method; it's effective and does allow ready dismantling and I have never had any difficulty in drilling the necessary axial hole in the chuck body (chucks on reversing hand power drills are, of course, retained in this way).