Found my Lathe !

[jdh47]

Those cams are made of something like delrin. They do expand some in use with all the oil. The guy stated that the new ones are made of metal but not something any of us could afford to get from the 600 group.

A decent flat back four jaw and three jaw chuck will do fine. You need to machine the backplates for them to get all the accuracy out of the chucks you can. you can buy the D1-4 back plates and machine them to fit the chucks. PM me if you need any guidance and I am willing to help you all I can. Ebay will have some good prices on independent four jaw chucks many with the back plates on. 10" is what you want I think. Three jaw chucks work better if you machine the back plate for it.

You will spend some for tooling at first but it will pay off later. A lot of stuff you don't need and some is great to have. A good quick change toolpost setup is great. Aloris BXA size should fit good. The tool post should be Aloris, DTM or zat least Phase II. The holders from the orient are fine. Even the AXA size would work.

Joe

 

[rardoin]

I suggest looking for a used Buck Forkardt chuck. Top of the line quality and can be found used at a fair price. I had a 3 jaw and 4 jaw 10" BF and they were great. The 4 jaw did double duty on a mill's 4th axis also. Very precise tools.

 

[TRA]

Buy the best scroll chuck you can afford. Most used scroll chucks are junk. Having them reconditioned is expensive. Cast chucks are a waste of money. Semi-steel ones are so-so for light work as long as you don't over tighten them. Steel body and forged body chucks are the way to go.

You are entering an area where cheap is throwing your money away. Buy quality and cry once.

4 jaw chucks are a different matter, and finding good used ones is not impossible.

FWIW, high grade Bison scroll chucks are a fair chuck for the money. Some can be had without needing a back plate and are direct mount which improves rigidity and capacity due to less overhang.

Buck chucks ain't what they used to be, so be warned. They are still an over priced quality chuck, but no where what they used to be. They went over to he dark side like everyone else.

 

[rardoin]

Buck chucks ain't what they used to be, so be warned. They are still an over priced quality chuck, but no where what they used to be. They went over to he dark side like everyone else.

Hence, a used one. They can be found in good condition depending on your location.

 

[Shrek]

I have a close to perfect 8" four jaw Buck chuck on my Logan. I'm thinking I should buy a D-4 backplate and use it. It's a made in USA Buck. Any reason it would not work for the Colchester ?

Edit : it's a 6" . Still better than nothing.

 

[jdh47]

Your manual should say to use only chucks designed to run at high RPM which means steel body or forged and balanced. They are expensive. From experience used chucks can be a crap shoot and if you can't look and feel it could be a waste.

Your option to get a good four jaw to use a while has merit and you can get by quite well with it.

Joe

 

[jdh47]

Your Buck should be fine for the Colchester.

Joe

 

[Shrek]

Is a semi steel Bison direct mount a decent chuck? It can be had somewhat reasonable. Kind of hard to bite off $2000+ for a chuck at this point.

 

[ridgeway]

Get yourself a nice 6" set Tru(adjustable) three jaw. Best of both worlds...

 

[sdean]

Look at the Gator chucks. A friend of mine bought one and really likes it.

 

[carlsbad]

Since we're making chuck advice I'll add my 2c.

It is nice to have a 3 jaw that is accurate but not all all necessary. Generally .002 to .003 is good enough. You will almost never chuck anything up in a 3 jaw and try to cut concentric to the OD. If you do need concentricity, then you'll probably use the 4 jaw anyway.

I have a Bison adjust-tru 6 jaw and it is very nice for it's purpose: thin walled tubing. I've used it 3 time for this purpose in 15 years. I tried leaving it on for general purpose and found the following things I didn't like:

1. the adjust-tru feature make it heavier so taking in on and off to change to collets or 4 jaw is harder.
2. More importantly, the adjust-tru extends the overhang away from the spindle nose making is much less stiff. This is more of a concern on a D1-4 than a D1-5. I think your lathe is D1-4.
3. You'll still want to use collets for small and precise stuff.

I just sold my D1-4 lathe with 2 6" cheap chucks. I like to have 2 so I can leave the jaws reversed in 1 and never have to reverse them. I was very happy with the 3 jaw. I never chucked something up in it and checked runout. I chucked stock up it in it, machined what I needed, cut it off and moved on.

I also like to have 2 4 jaws for the same reason.

There is a guy on ebay now with a 6" D1-4 chinese chuck for $145 that came new with his lathe. He probably spent big bucks on a new chuck and now has one that is .002" better. That's about $400 per .001" improvement.

Now nice chucks are indeed nice. I just bought a used Strong chuck for my new D1-5 lathe. But if you're on a budget, and just starting up a shop, there is a lot of other tooling more important than a quality chuck.

--Jerry