Question for you machinists

Eric Patterson

Eric Patterson

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Staff member
I want to chuck up some 1/4" keystock on my wood lathe. I'm not going to turn the keystock down, but rather use it to drive wood pieces that have a 1/4" mortise. What collet would you recommend for doing this. I know I could use a four jaw chuck but figure there are less costly means. Are the ER, e.g. ER32, series of collets good for holding square stock? I know they are good for round stock. If so my plan would be to but a MT2 collet chuck and some ER32 collets.

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Another idea is to use a splitsleeve adapter.

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Suggestions?
 
Eric,

Are these collets you already have on hand or are you buying? I supect the collets will work better for you than the split sleeves. The collets will clamp to a wider range over and under of nominal size stamped on each collet. Yes they will hold and drive a square provided you buy one that is an internal square. They are available as round, square, hex, etc. just have to research your sources. This response is all right off the top of my head but I can check cataloges some time later if you need.
 
Dave

I don't have anything yet. I'm trying to find out a good solution before buying. I've not seen any that were square internal. I thought they were all round but that's what I get for thinking. If you can point me to an ER with square internal that would be great. In fact I now know to start looking. However, I don't think I've run across anything from Enco or MSC yet.

Thanks.
 
Eric,

I may have spoken too quickly before. The collets I were thinking about are actually a "5C" series collet. These may not work for your lathe application. Just doing a quick search in one of our cataloges yeilded no collets to drive anything other than round stock in the "ER" series collets.
 
Dave

Gotcha. I looked at the 5C but don't recall them having MT2 chucks. I did find a split sleeve 1/4" tap driver that has the square internal. I need to measure the actual shank of a 1/4" tap to see if it is the same as 1/4" keystock. If so that would be a $15 solution.
 
Eric,

I'm not sure the slipt tap driver will work the way you want it. They are made to grip the round portion of the tap shank yet drive tru the square on the end of the tap. I don't think that one would "grip" only on the internal square portion of the sleeve. Don't hold me to that as I've never had the need to know.

I'll give you a call this evening or weekend to discuss an idea which may fix you right up, depending on just exactly what your need is.
 
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