Oddly I cannot find this topic directly addressed. (wrong search terms?)
It's occured to me that I could gain considerable time put getting a collet chuck for my CNC lathe - hopefully one where chuck switch over wouldn't be too painful.
The "default" option would seem to be 5c - very widely used, lots of collet sizes and shapes, etc.
But the lathe has a 2" spindle bore, and so collets that could hold larger bars are appealing. 16c seems relatively common.
Royal has a system they call quick-grip, hardinge a very similar looking thing called FlexC - are these the same? Do the collets interchange?
(I thought I saw a post saying they were licencsed from the same source?)
Thoughts on this? I do mostly very small runs, and often setup time dominates (that is, it takes as long or longer to set up jaws and such as to make the parts.)
It's occured to me that I could gain considerable time put getting a collet chuck for my CNC lathe - hopefully one where chuck switch over wouldn't be too painful.
The "default" option would seem to be 5c - very widely used, lots of collet sizes and shapes, etc.
But the lathe has a 2" spindle bore, and so collets that could hold larger bars are appealing. 16c seems relatively common.
Royal has a system they call quick-grip, hardinge a very similar looking thing called FlexC - are these the same? Do the collets interchange?
(I thought I saw a post saying they were licencsed from the same source?)
Thoughts on this? I do mostly very small runs, and often setup time dominates (that is, it takes as long or longer to set up jaws and such as to make the parts.)