ER Collet chuck or normal Morse Taper Collets

Hi all,

I have just bought my first lathe and mill, and am in the process of building up a stock of tools. I have several of the Workshop Practice Series books and am researching around the topic and looking forward to actually following the basic projects within the books.

My first real question that I am stuck on is what are people's feelings about the ER collet chuck system versus the normal morse taper collets, Howard Hall's "Milling a complete course" seems to favour normal taper collets and recommends a threaded end.

I have an X2 mill with a MT3 spindle. As the tooling is a major expense, I do not want to end up with several sets of collets with some that hardly get used.

Any advice would be greatly appreaciated.

Many thanks
Andy

Hi all,

I've continued with more research and I feel that the ER Collets in size 32 would be a good purchase, but there are so many different brands available, can any one recommend a good value for money set? Or should I steer clear from ER all together?

Thanks

Andy

Andy

As in all things to a certain extent you gets what you pays for. Some years ago I purchased a set of Vertex ER32 collets along with a collet chuck for the milling machine to take them, I also bought an adapter for my lathe which I took great care to fit properly. I have not been disapointed. I am unable to comment on any other make as I have no experience of them. It generally pays to buy the best you can afford comensurate with the use you think they will get. Personally I would opt for a standard collet chuck for your mill along with a few collets to take standard endmills/slotdrills. i.e Clarkson / Osborne Titanic or one of the far eastern varieties, it's what I use most of the time. You can then take your time over the choice of ER32 outfit

Andy, I have a Myford 254S layhe and a new Super X3 Sieg mill. The ER32 collets from Arc Euro are brilliant. I also have some MT collets but I always use the ER32 ones. Speak to Ketan at ArcEuro. Top guy and top products IMHO. Normal disclaimers apply. Just one happy customer.

Hi Andy

I have an X2 and use ER25 collets with complete satisfaction. I'm not sure that using ER32 would benefit me other than making the collets more expensive!

It's your call though, I can see ER32 might be more useful isf used for workholding in the lathe, but few X2-sized cutters have shanks above 1/2" or 13mm, both available in ER25.

Neil

if you want to buy ER collets look at www.ctctools.biz. They are based in Hong Kong and provide excellent quality and service.

Mike

I was pleased with the ctc collets and chuck I purchased.

Mike

Think about about what you are going to do.
Most castings or lumps of metal first of all want to be skimmed or flattened off a bit. You can use an end mill or a flycutter. An end mill will do other things too but a flycutter is pretty much single task yet they do that task well so we all end up getting one.
Here you now have two options again. A cheap set normally of 3 sizes is one item where the far eastern sources are perfectly good enough as it is such a crude device anyway they can't go wrong. They will need to be held and normally have a 1/2 inch arbor. You don't really want to hold this in the end of a collet chuck using up headroom and simultaneously making it all less rigid. Better to get a 1/2 in taper collet. So you end up with one taper collet anyway.

Actually for a little more investment it is better not to get the set of 3 flycutters but to go for a single size of flycutter on a morse arbor so it is direct mounting and maximum rigidity.

Great advice everyone, thanks for your time.

Dusty, the Vertex are ones that I have seen highly recommended around the internet, so I was considering those, thanks for the recommendation. I have had very mixed experiences with older tooling from eBay, and I find it to be hit and miss as to what you can get, plus whenever I seem to go for something.

Mike, thanks for the advice about contacting Arc, I will do that tomorrow.

Neil, I have been looking at the size of mill bits needed for most of the beginner projects in the books I have and I agree, an ER25 is certainly more appropriate as I would never use the full capacity of the ER32, so that is one decision.

Mike, thanks for directing me to CTC Tools, I will investigate their very expansive catalogue. Generally, I am happy to pay more for quality that will last me a long time but will certainly have a look as the prices appear very competitive, especially for the beginner whom is likely to damage something.

Bazyle, definitely in future I want to be doing my own castings especially with aluminium but I am some way away from that. One of my to do projects is to make my own fly cutter, but I would have to be careful to keep it balanced as this is probably one of the more dangerous tools I have ever seen. As for what I want to do, pretty much anything that I can work with.

Thanks all for your invaluable advice. I appreciate it.

Andy

Andy,

I have used a set of ER25 collets from Emco for over 25 years with complete satisfaction. Also, a few extra sizes of ER25 from Arc Euro Trade and a full set of Vertex ER32 collets from Chronos have proved totally satisfactory. You need to take care over the chuck you use; the Emco one is spot on, but some of the far East import lathe chucks have slightly high runout. This can be corrected with care.

ER collets are good for holding milling cutters, provided you tighten them fully; if you don't there is a risk that the cutter may walk out of the chuck and spoil the work. I've only done this once in 25 years, a lesson you don't forget. The ball bearing closer from Gloster tooling are reputed to make this much more reliable, I bought one a few weeks ago but have not tested it yet.

The huge advantage of ER collets is their versatility. Each collet has a closing range of 1.0 mm (0.5 mm in the smallest couple of sizes) so is good for gripping material as well as cutters (BMS in particular is often a few thou undersize) and if you have a complete set you can hold anything in the size range.

David

Edited By David Littlewood on 21/04/2013 23:24:31

Another vote for CTC tools Hong Kong they trade on Ebay and I have bought collet sets and chucks excellent quality every time

For a lathe would reason that the hole thru' the spindle is the deciding factor, eg. mine is 20 mm dia. so ER25 is the collet chuck to buy or make.

To match a 20 mm bore you need an ER32 collet chuck. ER25 only go to a maximum size of 16 mm.

Mike

Hi - Yet another thumbs up for CTC, bought from them direct and goods delivered in about a week. I'm pretty sure CTC use the same Far East manufacturers as some UK suppliers.

M. Cox, yes ER25 is max. 16 dia., It's just that I'm making a ER25 chuck and will be happy to have 16mm dia. Just the way my mind works. But am now rethinking before I go any further, only just found a lump of CI to make the chuck, assuming CI will be suitable.

Some collet experience that might be useful to those still thinking about going ahead..

A little while I made a nose fitting ER 25 collet chuck in good quality steel for my Myford lathe and equipped it with CTC collets. I was rather doubtful of the price for them so I was not surprised to observe poor values with both the run out values and repeatability of centring. Sadly I got the same effects with a more expensive set of collets.

To sort wheat from chaff I borrowed a set of Vertex collets and the matching chucks [2 morse taper and Myford nose versions] from a good friend to carry out some real evaluations of performance.

It came as a salutory dent to my pride that the faults could all be traced back to my own chuck. It was also interesting to note that the CTC collets generally out performed the Vertex items, and my more expensive set, on those measurement criteria as well as being about 1/2 the price.

So make what you will of that.

Brian

Thanks to all for your invaluable advice, I have just placed an order with CTC Tools for an ER25 chuck/collets, the price is not too bad (postage was almost as much as the items, but the total was still cheap enough for me to play with).

I will look to get some normal Morse Taper collets when the time comes, but most of my beginner projects are small, i.e. making t-nuts, milling the faces of angle plate and so on, so I won't need too much throat for now.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Brian,

With my new homemade collet chuck (with gloster ball-bearing nut) I got 0.0001" runout with an Arc Euro collet and 0.0002" with my 'home made' collet. That's estimating tenths on a DTI that is graduated in 0.0005" divisions.

I used a lot of care, turing the MT3 blank in place in the lathe including a little square at 8 degrees to set the topslide and using a power drill as an auto-feed for the topslide.

Neil

You also have to bear in mind the possiblity that the bar you use to test runout could well not be perfectly round. Well, to be pedantic, it definitely won't be "perfectly" round, it's just a quetion of how far off it is. Generally speaking, silver steel and PGMS (precision ground mild steel) are both pretty good, ordinary mild steel may not be. For best certainty use a properly ground test bar, which should have a guaranteed specification of its roundness.

David

Edited By David Littlewood on 23/04/2013 23:00:56