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Collet mounted Scroll Chuck question

AndreE

Plastic
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Location
Atlanta, GA
Hello all!
I have a couple questions about collet mounted scroll chucks, if I may…. Search terms with the words collet and chuck together only return “Collet Chuck” results.

Can the collet be removed and a different collet mounted?
Were the collets soldered to the chuck, or how were they mounted/attached?

Here’s my dilemma…
I am not a machinist and as such, most of my questions stem from my ignorance. I have a Rivett 608 and a tiny 8mm watchmaker’s lathe, both fairly well appointed with chucks, collets etc.
For years I have been hoping to find a little Schaublin or Habegger 70 precision lathe. Recently I was fortunate enough to get a Habegger JH70 with a handful of collets, but no chucks. I’m sure I’ll eventually find some, but for the interim, I was wondering if chucks were sometimes repurposed for use on a different machine?

Between the Rivett and Wolf Jahn, I have a number of scroll chucks ranging from 55mm-100mm. One of the 60mm 6-jaw chucks currently has no collet mounted and I was wondering if one could mount it on a W12 collet and post? The mount hole seems to be cone-shaped. If I can remove the collet from a few of the others I would have a tidy number of chucks to choose from. Proportionally it looks like it may work.

Is there a specific name for collets with the little cone shaped spindle on top of them?

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I am not familiar with Habegger lathes. However, generally the outer surface of the spindle nose of metal cutting lathes bigger than watchmaker lathes is either threaded or has some other type of "coupling" to mount chucks.
The larger the chuck the least likely that it is mounted on a collet. It has (either integral to the chuck or on a separate backplate) the mating thread/coupling that will fit on the outside of the spindle nose.

Paolo
 
Those chucks are Snyder's patent (or copies) that were first made by American Watch Tool Co. in Waltham, MA around 1880. The AWT watch lathe business was bought, in 1918 I think, by F. W. Derbyshire, an ex-employee who had left a few years earlier. It is common to find the Snyder-marked chucks with the AWT marking removed from the stamp and the Derbyshire name stamped in the blank area. These chucks were made in several sizes with three or six jaws. They were sold with any commercially available collet arbor. Derbyshire made them with WW (8 mm) or Magnus-Elect (10 mm) arbors to fit their lathes, but they sometimes turn up with Moseley 8 mm arbors. Derbyshire made lathes with 3C collet spindles, so they may have made chucks with 3C arbors.

There are German copies of these chucks, also.

I have long ago made one or two replacement WW arbors for Snyder chucks when I got a good chuck with a damaged or wrong style arbor. I cannot recall the taper dimensions. I think I put a good arbor in my lathe and used a test indicator to set the slide rest to cut the same taper, then cut the taper on a blank collet arbor. The arbor is pressed into the chuck, much as a Jacobs taper chuck is mounted to the arbor.

Decades ago, Swiss-made scroll chucks became more common on watch lathes than the Snyder chucks. The Swiss scroll chucks are attached to the arbor with three or four screws, so it is pretty simple to fit them to a new arbor. The Swiss chucks are made in a number of sizes with three, six or eight jaws. Soft top jaws are available, as are replacement finished jaws. It is common to see the Swiss chucks on B8 or WW, Levin D (10 mm), 3C, W12, W20, W25 or 5C arbors. The smaller Swiss chucks were imported and marked by Levin, HR and Borel for watch lathes. Many of the Swiss chucks are stamped J-F and sometimes an additional name like Alina or Maprox.

The trouble with the Swiss chucks is that new ones cost in the thousands of dollars and used ones are often beat up and still carry a price of several hundred.

Levin lists a few small Swiss chucks, but fails to mention the diameter. Their lathes swing 100 mm over the bed.: LevinLathe.com: LEVIN CHUCKS

The Swiss independent 4-jaw chuck that Levin sells has a metric taper mount which is also used in European drill chucks. Like a Jacobs taper, but different.

You asked for the name of the collet with a taper on the end. Levin and Derbyshire make tapered arbors in 8 or 10 mm with Jacobs 0 or 1A tapers to mount drill chucks. They also make arbor blanks for you to machine to whatever shape you wish.

LevinLathe.com: BLANK COLLETS AND ARBORS

I expect Schaublin makes them in a range of useful sizes.

Larry
 








 
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