5C mount 3-jaw chuck

[specfab]

I am preparing to buy a small 5C-mount 3-jaw chuck. I would like to know if anyone has observations about either CME Tools or HHIP offerings. I purchased one from Larry Vanice on this site a few years back, which was a nice unit at a nice price. It was a Polish-made chuck, as I recall. I don't have a great feel for the "inexpensive" offerings, other than that I bought from eBay prior to getting the unit from Larry, and the eBay chuck was truly crap. It was a 4" dia, and had seriously misground jaws.
I need something that has inside and outside jaw set. If you have any observations or suggestion, please let me know. If you have something to offer, please also let me know.Thanks, all --

 

[technocrat]

I've got a couple of small TOS chucks I'm very happy with. Czech I think.

 

[Greg Menke]

I treated myself to one of the relatively inexpensive import 3-jaw 5C chucks.. not very proud of that but it was cheap. Quality is actually reasonable, though the edges tend to be a bit sharp. Fits great in the Phase2 collet indexer.

 

[Smoooth]

I am preparing to buy a small 5C-mount 3-jaw chuck. I would like to know if anyone has observations about either CME Tools or HHIP offerings. I purchased one from Larry Vanice on this site a few years back, which was a nice unit at a nice price. It was a Polish-made chuck, as I recall. I don't have a great feel for the "inexpensive" offerings, other than that I bought from eBay prior to getting the unit from Larry, and the eBay chuck was truly crap. It was a 4" dia, and had seriously misground jaws.
I need something that has inside and outside jaw set. If you have any observations or suggestion, please let me know. If you have something to offer, please also let me know.Thanks, all --

Will you be running this in a lathe spindle, collet indexer, or on a 5C tool holder - out of curiosity?

 

[Clive603]

At that price point you'd probably do better buying a decent brand of chuck and amounting it on a 5C blank end arbor yourself.

Total lottery at the affordable end of the market as to how good the thing is.

The 5" Chinese one I bought maybe 20 years ago to use with a Spindexer turned out to be insanely good. Nice tight scroll, about 0.001" run out through the whole range. Ideally I'd like an extra turn on the scroll but it's happy at 2,000 rpm on the lathe which will do me. Actually I never intended to use it on the lathe, there is a mint Taylor 5" sitting in the cupboard originally earmarked for that task. Reports from other folk who'd bought the "same" 5" chuck on a 5C mount assembly from the same supplier confirm that quality is indeed variable. But generally useable. Several folk say not to buy for lathe duties.

Clive