What Did You Buy Today?

Papa Charlie said:
I am sure as @woodchucker is anticipating, going to be a lot of different views on this. Here is my $0.02 worth.

1) You have already purchased the raw material to make your own.
2) If you make your own, and make it on the machine that will use the collet chuck then you know it will be true to your spindle thereby ensuring that you will get the most accuracy out of the collets.
3) If you buy the already made one, you are going to have fork out more money for the backing plate and shipping that you could use towards the collets.
4) You don't know how accurate the backing plate will be on your machine. Remember a chuck is a system of the backing plate, the alignment of the joint between the backing plate and chuck, and finally the alignment between the chuck taper and the collets. Any variation in each part of the system exaggerates the misalignment between the spindle and the work piece.

Just my opinion since you asked.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your opinion. Honestly, I asked for opinions (and the why) because I'm trying to screw up enough courage to proceed with either of them. Thought it would be helpful to hear opinions from experienced people. I'm not yet in that group!
 
woodchucker said:
Did you check out their price on Epay.. sometimes the price and shipping are less.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I did. Wasn't even a listing. Sent a message to discount_machine today and they said it is not available. However, I could buy both a chuck and the matching plate on discount_machine. The back plate is available on the Shars website! Weird.

I bought the chuck from discount_machine and saved $40 compared to buying from Shars. Not sure I understand what their model is.
 
WobblyHand said:
Thanks for your opinion. Honestly, I asked for opinions (and the why) because I'm trying to screw up enough courage to proceed with either of them. Thought it would be helpful to hear opinions from experienced people. I'm not yet in that group!
Click to expand...
Oh, but as I have said before, just because people have experience, doesn't mean they don't screw up.. Sometimes big time.
One person on you tube who went pro was showing his work for a customer, showed the blueprint, and the part. I mentioned to him that he had cut a cutout backward from the blueprint... everyone then noticed that I was right.. that was his last posting ever. Up until then he was so proud. I didn't do it for shame, I did it so he would know before he delivered it. Sometimes S happens.
 
sdelivery said:
Wobblyhand stay focused. They did not have the part you wanted, you bought the material don't question your previous judgment Make the part and take pictures to post!
Click to expand...
I'm leaning this way. I have the metal. Don't have the full design yet. Shars conveniently left out the dimensions of this backing plate. But I am maybe 50% done making a FreeCAD model of the back plate. Wasn't too hard. Got to make some spindle measurements still, but the model is parameterized, so I can stuff in some real numbers instead of the swag I made.

I'm missing some tooling and frankly the experience. Can't get the experience unless you do it, so I get that. Leaning towards just doing it.
 
woodchucker said:
Oh, but as I have said before, just because people have experience, doesn't mean they don't screw up.. Sometimes big time.
One person on you tube who went pro was showing his work for a customer, showed the blueprint, and the part. I mentioned to him that he had cut a cutout backward from the blueprint... everyone then noticed that I was right.. that was his last posting ever. Up until then he was so proud. I didn't do it for shame, I did it so he would know before he delivered it. Sometimes S happens.
Click to expand...
Hey, we are all human (I think!) so mistakes happen, even on a grand scale. But there's some merit to asking people's opinions. Maybe they can share some hard earned wisdom. That's not a bad thing.

I'm going to be diving into the deep end. I have the material. It's a new set of skills to learn. I get to make tools. Maybe I get to buy tools. Mmm, that doesn't sound bad so far. It will be a project.

Yeah, a bit worried about muffing the piece, but, I can buy more iron, right? Or a back plate? Going for it. Only one way to learn to do this, and that is to try.
 
Sorry for the interruption. Looking forward to seeing all your new stuff!
 
I was just going to say go ahead and make it, if you screw it so bad it won't work then but the backplate.

I don't have any experience yet, so you have way more experience more than what I have.
 
WobblyHand said:
Feel silly asking here, (this is Hobby Machinist after all,) but, what would you do if you were me? Extra points for also including why.
Click to expand...

I would purchase the one that is threaded but that's because I bought chucks to use for other projects not have the chuck be a project! You'll earn a lot of well deserved respect if you make it yourself though not to mention the extra skills you will pick up. I've made a few now starting from threaded blanks and it is a messy job. You'll want to put some thought into how you are going to protect your machine from the mess. The last one I did I fashioned a cardboard fence around the work area and kept a shop vac on during the turning. So I guess it's a messy and a noisy affair!

image018.jpg

It might not apply to your machine or motor but I had really good luck with negative rake carbide insert tooling on this last one. I leaned a lot about what my machine could do with cast iron too. I played with speeds and feeds and I had a lot of time to do this since the blank I started with was 10" diameter and I needed to take it down to ~5 1/2.

After awhile I settled on .075 deep cuts and it was great. Passing through the end of the material created these rings!

image019.jpg

image021.jpg

Good luck! It is rewarding outfitting your own chuck.
 
I've been working on this 5-cylinder radial engine on/off for coming on two years now. I'm hoping to finish up by summer (fingers crossed):
www.hobby-machinist.com

Edwards Radial 5 build thread --- PHOTOS!

Episode 1 || Introduction to My Build Thread Background After a brief search through the H-M.com archives, I was a bit surprised that nobody had documented their journey building an Edwards Radial 5-cylinder engine. These engines are reasonably complex and time consuming to construct, but as...
www.hobby-machinist.com www.hobby-machinist.com


Seeing that the project is hopefully in the waning months, I'm starting to plan my next big project.

I'm not sure how ambitious I want to go yet, but I'm planning on it being clock/watch/timekeeper related. So in anticipation of kicking that project off, I figured I'd get a Bergeon tool catalog to help me brainstorm. They're the worldwide leader in watch/clockmaking tools, so it should make some nice bedtime reading.

1643754994732.jpeg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top