I finally ditched those cheap Chinese collets after losing a $400 job

Last month I was running a batch of aluminum parts and decided to save some cash with a $35 set of ER collets off eBay. Figured a collet is a collet, right? Wrong. The runout was so bad on the 1/4 inch one that I scrapped a whole batch of 20 parts. Material cost me about $200, plus 8 hours of wasted machine time. My boss wasn't thrilled either. Anyone else learn this lesson the hard way or am I the only one dumb enough to cheap out on tooling?

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2 Comments

troy_reed4mo ago

More oval than round"... how bad was the taper on it?

4

brookes374mo ago

Bought a $20 set of ER collets once. The 1/4" one was more oval than round.

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