Upgrade my tool holder game after 8 years of fighting with collets

I used to just grab whatever collet was closest and tighten it down with the standard wrench. Then last month a job with tight tolerances kept throwing parts out of spec by .005. Turns out my old collets had some wear and I was never really seating the tool right. Picked up one of those precision ER collet nuts with the ball bearings. Night and day difference. Now I'm holding runout under .001 and it only cost me about $60 per holder. Anyone else notice a big jump in quality from switching collet brands or styles?

2 comments

2 Comments

alex_hall912d ago

Man, I had a buddy who went through something similar. He was a hobby machinist, always fighting with his setup. He switched to a name brand collet nut with the ball bearings and it was like night and day for him. His old parts had this weird taper and chatter marks he could never explain. First part after the swap was dead on, no chatter at all, runout was tight. He said it felt like cheating for how easy it was to dial in.

the_kevin2d ago

Wait @alex_hall91, "like cheating"??? Bro that's wild. I've been fighting with my cheap import collet setup for months and every time I think I got it dialed the runout comes back. Hearing that swapping just the nut with the little bearings fixed his chatter issues makes me wanna throw my whole setup in the trash. Might have to finally drop the cash on one of those actual brand name ones.