Chinese ? Junk !

[Ken I]

To say the least I'm dumbfounded.

My local supplier has been trying to palm off these shoddy ER collet chucks (thought to be of Chinese origin).

Shoddy - I just don't get it - its well made, all the surfaces are ground (including the thread), its hardened and it looks well made - dammit it is well made - but utterly useless.

The concentricity is simply terrible - to check it I turned a piece of stock in my lathe - tightened the collet onto the stock and clocked it up. (This after first wondering what was wrong with my lathe - turns out nothing !)

Of three tried the best was 50 microns TIR (but not straight - 100 microns 25mm from the chuck) the next worst was 120 and the worst was 160.

Arrrrrgghhhhh.......

Did they think I wouldn't notice ?

Surely the first thing anyone is going to do is clock the damn thing up.

What's the point of going to all that trouble to make a product to have it fail absolutely and utterly at the very thing it is supposed to do ?

The MT taper isn't even paralell - it clocks up a lot worse at one end to the other and all the "high" points (I marked them) where at different angular positions.

The collets are all over the place as well but nowhere near as bad as the chuck itself - the whole lot is going back and I will source elsewhere.

How sad !

Ken

 

[GailInNM]

Ken,
If you have not used ER's before, you may not know that the collet has to be snapped into the nut before being inserted into the body. It's a bit of an art if you have not done it before and will give you that type of runout. When correctly installed the collet face will be nearly flush with the face of the collet nut.

From the Little Machine Shop web site:
"As with all ER collet chucks, the collet must be snapped into the nut before placing it into the chuck. There is an eccentric ring inside the nut that engages the groove in the collet. That is what makes them self-ejecting.""

Gail in NM

 

[gbritnell]

Hi Ken,
I had a similar experience. I thought an ER32/R8 collet chuck would be just the ticket for my mill, that way I wouldn't have to loosen the drawbar all the time.
I watched Ebay for quite awhile and a set came up from a private individual with not much information. Before the item closed I contacted the seller and asked of the accuracy. He said he had only used it a couple of times but never actually threw and indicator on it. "It seemed OK". I guess that should have been a warning.
I went ahead an purchased it. I only had to pay $43.00 for it so it wouldn't be a big loss if it didn't work out.
When it came it was as you described, fully ground, nice finish etc. The first thing I did was to mount it into my mill spindle and set up my dial indicator to check it. It was almost .003 out of concentricity. My mill spindle is dead nuts, at least with a .0005 dial indicator.
Knowing that the holder was unusable but still wanting to have this type of tool I looked at several of the import tool suppliers. The one I picked I have dealt with in the past with mixed quality results but they are very good about returned items. They list a couple of the same holders, the 'good one' having a tolerance of .0001, for a little more money. I went with that one. When it arrived I went through the same procedure, almost .002 out. Now .002 might not sound like much but it's not even close to .0001 and when using small end mills like I do it means quite a bit.
I contacted the seller and he said he didn't know how that could be but send it back and he would refund my money or send me another holder.
Still wanting the use of this tool I said "send me another". I'll bet you can guess where this is going. The next one was closer, .0015 out but it wasn't parallel with the spindle axis. By that I mean the reading at the tip of the taper was different than the reading at the bottom of the taper.
After some conversation with a fellow who speaks very broken English he agreed to accept the second one but would not send another, instead would refund my money. Fine but where does that leave me wanting a holder.
All of these suppliers advertise a similar holder with a tolerance of .0001 with widely varying prices. I haven't taken the plunge again, yet.
There is another tool supplier that sells this item, Glacern. I contacted them and they said they stand behind everything they sell. If there is any problem just send it back for a full refund.
Although I have heard good things about Glacern, at this point I don't know what to do.
As has been stated on this and other forums the problem with the Chinese tooling is it's so hit and miss. Some stuff is good and some stuff is not so good. You take your chances.
George

 

[Ken I]

Ken,
If you have not used ER's before, you may not know that the collet has to be snapped into the nut before being inserted into the body.

Gail, I have used ER's before and am well aware of the snap ring problem - it was the first thing that crossed my mind when I first tried it - this was not the issue - I even tired meticulously cleaning everything - same result.
I tried several different positions in my spindle - same result - at that point I clocked my spindle 10 microns TIR 0.0004" not dead nuts but not bad either (also a cheap Chinese lathe).

At that point I put my chuck back on and turned a piece of stock dead true - the rest as told.

Thanks for the comment nontheless.

George, my sympathy, I know how you feel - I want to be able to use this on my mill or lathe and its just simply nowhere near good enough.
It crossed my mind to take it into work and mount it on the Jones & Shipman cylindrical grinder and fix it - but then thought "why should I ?"
It might yet come to that.

Regards,
Ken

 

[stevehuckss396]

I have been trying to warn people for some time now. I purchased a set of er11's and paid well over $100 bucks for them. The TIR is almost nothing on the 2 that I checked. I was called "Insane" for spending that kind of money when a set can be had for under $40. Of course these same people can never get a good finish, can't drill a straight hole, cant get a valve to seal and are always looking for a good way to extract a broken tap. When I'm here on the forum I try to limit my comments unless they are solicited.

 

[Blogwitch]

I must have been lucky with mine, an el cheapo and only a slight flicker on a 0.0001" DTI.

But I have 'fixed' a few for other people who had the same sorts of trouble as you are having, and one of those was a very expensive British make.

With things like this now, I just bite the bullet and make my own, I then know it will match my machinery perfectly and have no runout at all. I can only then blame myself if there is a problem, but I haven't had to yet.

I actually found them very easy to make, especially if I used a cheap purchased blank end arbor as the basis for one.


John

 

[pelallito]

John,
Do you have the time to do a write up on making your own ER collets and arbor? I have been wanting to try them out.
Thanks,
Fred

 

[pmerritt]

I've been pretty happy with the one I got from Tools4Cheap (terrible name). Don't remember how it checked out with the indicator but I was satisfied. I hope the chuck I got for the mill will be decent. Since I have no way of testing runout without modifying the chuck (see thread on machine mods) I'm stuck with it if it sucks. I would like to make a holder to fit the spindle threads. That will have the additional benefit of letting me pass work through the spindle. I need to see if the old south bend can cut the metric thread for the nut. I have a friend with the gears for cutting metric but I'll have to see if they will fit the gear train on my lathe. There is about a 20 year difference in vintage.

 

[Blogwitch]

Fred,

I don't make the collets, it is not really cost effective, but I do make the holders for them, plus holders for lots of things.

I think it was only a couple of days ago in another post on here, I gave a link to where I had made an er32 nose fitting.

A few different things, just for you.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=2249.msg23587#msg23587

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=1993.msg20614#msg20614

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=4758.msg52580#msg52580

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=2002.msg20753#msg20753

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=4805.msg53225#msg53225

Sorry to everyone for hijacking, hopefully I won't need to put any more links in.


John

 

[rake60]

I bought this inexpensive R8 shank ER32 set a few years ago from the
eBay vendor 800WATT.

The cost was $80 for the set and the TIR is .001"
That is to be expected since the spindle run out in my X2 is .001"
Perfect for cutting keyways to a width of nominal size +.002" :

Rick

 

[Swede]

I vaguely remember a thread where I flatly stated something like "If you've just bought a new Albrecht drill chuck, do yourself a favor and mount it in a quality arbor, because some of the Chinese arbors are GROSSLY bad, inaccurate." And I had the feeling some of the guys thought I was blowing smoke. But it's true. Even a simple device like an arbor can look awesome but be worthless as a precision tool.

The first thing I do with this sort of tool is measure the runout in the female cavity with no collet. If that's good, I chuck up a gauge pin, and measure the pin, because sometimes collets can be bad. But obviously if the internal and external tapers are not accurately ground, the best collet in the world is worthless.

 

[pelallito]

Thanks John!!
I will be reading those links today.
Sorry about the hijack.
I want to get a set, so this will help a lot.
Thanks for starting this.
Regards,
Fred

 

[mu38&Bg#]

I've had some collets with burrs in the bores. Out of a ten piece Chinese ER16 set I've used seven, and three or four had burrs. At least one of them was still junk after cleaning it up.

Greg