FGarbrecht
Member
Need some advice on work holding methods for small parts on minilathe. I have a HF 7x10 with the standard 3 jaw chuck. The chuck has a little too much slop in the way it seats the workpiece (I can put in a cylinder pretty straight by eye but its not reproducible, always out by a few thou if I take the work out and rechuck it). The chuck jaws also make too much of the blank inaccessible to the tool, so I'd like to turn between centers. If I understand things correctly (I'm very new to this), I need to get a faceplate and lathe dog set, and either buy a 3MT dead center or machine a straight sided dead center to be held by the chuck jaws. Is this correct? Does anyone use a collett chuck on the mini-lathe?