| Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs |
| A couple of quickie fixes |
| << < (3/4) > >> |
| kvom:
Soft jaws are great, both for lathe and milling vise usage. CNC lathes with non-collet chucks typically use soft jaws all the time. Those jaws are steel. For home shop use, aluminum jaws are easiest to use. If a chuck has 2-piece jaws, then the upper jaws can be replaced with aluminum bars. It's just a matter of cutting to size and drilling/countersinking holes to match the inner jaws. I bought chucks for my lathe and rotab with 2-piece jaws just for use with soft jaws. You don't need a high quality chuck since runout is irrelevant; the bored pocket will be concentric with the spindle perforce. BTW, don't dismount the chuck until you're done with that pocket in order to maintain accuracy. As this thread shows, soft jaw pockets are often the only way to securely and accurately hold a thin disc. |
| cfellows:
Nice write-up, Bogs. Always enjoy reading your posts. I was going to ask about using soft jaws with a chuck having 2-piece jaws and KVOM answered that question. Chuck |
| Bogstandard:
Chuck, Thanks for the encouragement. It seems in the UK, those two part chuck jaws aren't as popular as the one piece type that I use. Maybe it is our pessimistic way of thinking, the less there is, there is less to go wrong. But I will keep repeating it until I am blue in the face, soft jaws are the cheapest method to get super accuracy. I even bore out the jaws when I fit them to my RT chucks on the mill if required. John |
| Blade:
Thanks for the answer John. I may not be able to find soft jaws for my chuck but I know I can get emergency collets which can serve the same purpose up to a certain size. Would be nice to have the soft jaws for the larger sizes though, maybe I can make some for the four jaw. |
| Bogstandard:
Blade, Soft jaws are only of any use with self centring chucks, not for 4 jaw independents. John |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |