I decided I needed a small drill chuck for use in the router. I occasionally see jobs pop up on the Xometry job board where the only way to achieve a certain size hole would be via. drill bit. I found a good used Jacobs #0 chuck on ebay (older one made in Hartford, Connecticut). New ones are available, but their authenticity & origin (and therefore quality) is questionable at best. I also got an Amana tool arbor #47616 that has a 1/4" shank with a 5/16-24 threaded shoulder mount.
If you’re interested in getting one of these chucks, make sure you get one with the threaded mount as opposed to the JT0 tapered mount. The capacity of this chuck is 0-.157" [0-4mm].
Do you happen to know of a decent edge finder with a 1/4" shaft that will work with the Makita? From what I understand, even the lowest RPM is too high for a typical edge finder.
@Ziggy No, I sure don’t my friend. I’ve never even seen an edge finder with a 1/4" shank. As a machinist, the ones I used had 3/8" shanks. Yeah, you’re right about the RPM’s though, they would probably destroy one even if they made one in that size.
Most people use just a cutter shank or pin (1/8" or 1/4") with an aluminum corner finder block & the probe routine. Myself, I only probe Z, so I’ve not had any use for X-Y probing.
@dsunds that looks like a decent little chuck, and can’t beat the price. Good ratings, too. I thought briefly about a non-keyed chuck, but was concerned about it holding the bit tight enough. True the hex isn’t ideal, but being a threaded mount you may be able to find a different arbor for it.
Conflicting specs on it. Description states that it will hold 0-.039" (1mm), but reading farther it says .3mm - 3.2mm capacity. Typical of Amazon.
I’ve been with them a little over a year now, and have done 14 jobs. I have a fairly tight job filter set up to filter out jobs I wouldn’t be interested in, so the jobs are actually few & far between. But the experience itself is pretty great, and Xometry is a pretty strong company. They did a pretty good job setting everything up to become a partner. Once a job is completed & shipped, they pay in 30 days. All parts must be within +/-0.005" by default (unless otherwise specified on a print, if there is one). The first 3 or 4 jobs I had to send back to them for inspection before they were shipped on to the customer.
Then once you’re past the probationary period, you can self-inspect & send to the customer directly. Because my inspection capability is limited to digital calipers, I can only measure FOS (Features Of Size). This also limits the jobs I can take.
@paulmcevoy75 here’s an example of a recent job I did a couple months ago. They supply a generic inspection report template, but you have to do your own inspection print. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I create prints for a living so it’s pretty easy for me to create decent prints.
@paulmcevoy75 an inspection print is a functional print that shows dimensions that are to be inspected (not necessarily every dimension associated with the part). One could teach themselves, but it takes years to become proficient. A community college course could be of huge help in learning this. There is such a shortage of machinists that merely taking a community college course would go a long ways in helping to land a manufacturing job. My career has spanned 40+ years without having taken any college course. One company I was working for as a machinist was a huge conglomerate of design & build shops. One of their design shops was offering AutoCAD classes (this was 1994, so
AutoCAD was still very relevent). I became AutoCAD certified, then moved into tool design work.
Yes, that job was the first time I’ve machined PEEK. It was easy to machine, but hugely expensive. The 6" x 12" piece I bought was $140. The job paid $354, but my material cost came out of that.
I wanted to thank you for this post. I have been looking for something like this for a few months for the exact reason you listed, and have a similar setup with a 1/4" router but much smaller. I machine mostly aluminum and being able to use small actual drill bits, not having the change collets, will make my life so much easier. I found an older Jacobs #0B chuck with a 1/4 straight shank already attached for about $30 on ebay. I plan on cleaning it up and putting it to use in my mini mill to make my drill programing much easier on the machine vs using for example 2.5mm end mills to bore small M3 sized holes to hand tap later.
This chuck has worked out fantastic, and I also used it when I had my X2 mini mill. I would ‘spot’ the holes on the CNC using a 60 degree ‘V’ bit, then either drill them on the mini mill or sometimes on a small drill press.
