# Collet Blocks & Beyond



## Charley Davidson (Feb 8, 2012)

just discovered these nifty accessories and thought it would be cool to start a thread on them and other neat tooling ideas and their usage, these are obvious.


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## Old Iron (Feb 8, 2012)

I have a set of those for about 4 years I really like them, And they sure come in handy on the mill.

Paul


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## hq308 (Feb 8, 2012)

Charley Davidson said:


> just discovered these nifty accessories and thought it would be cool to start a thread on them and other neat tooling ideas and their usage, these are obvious.ATTACH=CONFIG]33516[/ATTACH]



What do they do? I've never seen them before.:thinking:


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## Tony Wells (Feb 8, 2012)

With 5 C Collets, you can use them to hold stock or semifinished parts in your mill vise with easy, precise indexing with 2, 3, 4, or 6 positions. Among other things.


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## Charley Davidson (Feb 8, 2012)

Simply put you can make hex bolt heads without using a dividing head. Just chuck your piece in the Collet then mount the block into your vice, mill  that surface, rotate and repeat until you come full circle. You can do more also.


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## hq308 (Feb 8, 2012)

Thanks guys it's makes a lot of sense now. Something else for the tool wish list.


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## Tom Griffin (Feb 9, 2012)

Definitely one of those "must haves" for the mill. Next to the vise and the drill chuck, the collet blocks are probably the most used accessory on my mill. They save you a lot of setup time because they can, in many cases, be used in place of a dividing head. The cam lock is also nice for repetitive work. If you have a lot of parts to do, just set a stop in the collet, clamp the collet block in the vise or on an angle plate, and go to town. 

And speaking of collet stops, they are another "must have" tool. They mount to the internal thread of a collet (be sure all the 5C collets you buy have internal threads, not all of them do) and have a screw stop and locknut that can be set to any depth and even turned down on the lathe so they extend into the jaws of the collet for really short parts. 

I also use the collet blocks as a sort of pin vise for small parts, like when making hex or slotted screw heads. 

Mayhem: There is a length limit on parts when using the cam lock, but not with the locking ring.

Tom


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## Tony Wells (Feb 10, 2012)

The holder vs collet argument is a popular one. For me, I use a collet almost exclusively for the turret mill, unless I happen to need a 1" end mill, or tool shank. I have a boring head on a 1"" arbor. I have a 1" holder in R8 that I use in collet. 

I never use collets for drilling. If I use a larger end mill, I use a holder. I think that most people who have problems with the tool being drawn out of there collet during work don't have something set up right, the tool is dull, or perhaps they are pushing a dull tool past its limits. A properly tightened collet is sufficient to drive an end mill. You will usually get better runout of the tool, which makes your work easier, and is easier on the tool as well.

Oh, and if you use a holder for an endmill, with the set screws locked on the flat, it won't spin; something will break.


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## Tom Griffin (Feb 10, 2012)

Tony Wells said:


> I never use collets for drilling. If I use a larger end mill, I use a holder. I think that most people who have problems with the tool being drawn out of there collet during work don't have something set up right, the tool is dull, or perhaps they are pushing a dull tool past its limits. A properly tightened collet is sufficient to drive an end mill. You will usually get better runout of the tool, which makes your work easier, and is easier on the tool as well.
> 
> Oh, and if you use a holder for an endmill, with the set screws locked on the flat, it won't spin; something will break.



I don't use collets for drilling in a manual mill because it's easier to just throw them in a chuck. I do use them for NC when there are a lot of tool changes and they seem to work fine. If an end mill won't spin in one I doubt a drill will either. The only time I've ever had an end mill pull out of a collet was with an old Index mill that had a puny drawbar that was hard to get tight.

Speaking of broken end mills; I actually broke an 1 1/2" end mill once. It was in a large vertical mill, probably a Cincinnati, and I was going to touch off the side of a part and ran a bit to close to it with the rapid traverse. It literally sounded like a 12 gauge going off and scared the crap out of everyone in the shop. Luckily the foreman took it rather well and I still had a job the next day. 

Tom


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