Machinist

I found a real neat video that shows you how to make a collet closer for cheap for a South Bend.

I also recently got into collets because my work place has 1 lathe with a 3 jaw chuck and every other lathe is a Hardinge or Lagun turn master with collets. When I was in my machine trades class, we had one collet lathe, and I always hated it because it was so different. Which is now very ironic because all we have is collets, however I did learn that collets are used because of very small run out. I hated indicating 4 jaw chucks because of it being so finicky to get perfect, but the reason you use a 4 jaw is that it can spin more true than a 3 jaw self centering. Which odds are I would have liked collets more if I knew the advantage of collets over chucks. I recently learned this and found it very fascinating and wanted to share.