Clarkson Auto-lock chuck

[wayne]

Hi

Can any body tell me if the housing body and arbor on a MT2 Clarkson Auto-lock milling chuck are one piece or detachable

My housing has a dramatic wobble

P's My Qualcut Chuck and also my test bar Run dead true so i no its the Clarkson Chuck thats at fault

Any help would be appreciated

Wayne

[jonkett]

Autolock chucks are manufactured in one piece, they do not have a separate shank. These days in the wider field of engineering, the autolock system has fallen out of favour and the ER collet and sidelock/weldon shanks are much more popular. The latest in high accuracy systems heat shrink the collet around the cutter shank.

[wayne]

Thanks for the info jonkett, as i suspected i have bought £90 of scrap, from last years Harrogate show. I should no better and test a second hand purchases immediately.

Regards Wayne

[Tel]

I'm not familiar with 'em, but can you hold the chuck end in a chuck and recut the taper to MT1 and then use an adaptor?

[pcplod]

Two things on your learning curve Wayne - one is "no" in the context you use it is spelt "know" and the other more important one is "why is someone selling this?"

Obviously a "young" yorkshireman"

Plod (with a canny sporran!)

[alanstepney]

Clarkson autolocks were well made, and so I would be surprised if it had been damaged to the point of being seriously out of true.
Obviously it can happen, but in that case, I would have thought that it would be possible to rectify whatever-it-is that has gone wrong.

OK, call me mean if you like (I've been called worse!) but had I spent £90, I would get the darn thing running properly one way or another!

[kneedeepinswarf]

I once saw an Autolock chuck put out of true by a bad jam-up. The 5/8 inch end-mill was shattered in the process. This was not done by me, I hasten to add!
This chuck was a 3 Morse taper, so it could easily happen to a 2 Morse taper chuck. As these chucks are hardened, re-machining of the taper is probably not practical, but if you have access to a fly-press or even a large arbor press, you might be able to restore the true running. I would be worth trying before writing off £90

[wayne]

Thanks For the Replies

The chuck was bought at Harrogate from one of the big names who advertise in MEW, so i expected it to be ok; I bought it because I could not get metric collets for my qualcut chuck.

However, my mistake was not testing it immediately, i can hardly go back over two years later, and ask for my money back. The reason i did not test it on the dore westbury was due to this machine only having a 5/16 draw bar.

My spelling is very poor as i am dyslexic, and why i explained to Richmond i would not be interested in writing for MEW, 11 years at tech on courses and 5 lecturing and i never new I am dyslectic until I did a hnc business course and they found out in 2 months.

[Richmond]

To my knowledge Dyslexia doesn't affect model engineers except when it comes to counting out money ;D

Just my 3.14159265 pence worth

[Richmond]

Wayne, on a serious note, and not wishing to teach you to suck eggs, but is the morse taper clean, no dings or marks that prevent it from sitting square in the socket ?

Keith

[ravensworth2674]

Wayne,

Dead True, eh? I am sure that almost everyone here wants to know what your secret is.

I have a book called Schlesinger's Limits or some such, somewhere. None of my swag is anywhere near the tolerances in it.

There are things called Shewarts Bowl that illustrate this thing called the mean and what happens one, two, three standard deviations from it.

Do you really have a set of measuring tackle which NPL could be proud of?

People are here to try to help but - well?

Let's be honest, please

Norm

[circlip]

Check wobble between centres

[ravensworth2674]

Ian, Morning and that from Old Grumpy here but I am wondering whether Wayne has a 'Clarkson' but a cheap substitute.

cheers

Norm

[circlip]

Sorry Avie, missed that one, at a cost of 90 pictures of HRH second hand, it had better be a Clarkson.
Ian

[ravensworth2674]

Ian,
Sorry for the confusion. I was wondering whether our young 'Waning Moon' had a Clarkson chuck or some cheap imitiation. There is a difference! Caveat Emptor and sic blether.

Again, I was thinking that for 90 photos- secundo mano of HRH ,one can buy a Clarkson- like wot ah has. ''Cept that my Clarkson made Clarksons,'cos it is a tool and cutter grinder.

And for a hundred- not 90 photos of
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, that is wot mine cost.

So- our little wonder could set up and make his own swag- sorry, precision equipment.

Norm

[wayne]

Hi Everybody

First Norman points

Some time ago the chap who owns Arrand tooling photocopied me Schlesinger's tests for lathes and milling machines, so I am well aware of what test to apply, norman as you requested how I did the tests hear we go. The test to check my mills quill spindle run out was conducted at the nose and 6" from the nose with my test bar (of Arrand manufacture the same test bars as they supply Jones and Shipman) and since you ask are both expensive and extremely accurate

The spindle run out is 2 ten thousand of an inch at 6" and 0 at the nose which is dead enough true in my book for a production class milling machine (as per Schlesinger's/ Tubal Cains classifications in ME) in fact it exceeds tool room standard

The autolock chuck is a genuine Clarkson which looks in as new condition ie no dings on notches in it and runs out of true over 1/8 of an inch out on the body.

Also (to me) the big clue is that my Qualcut collect chuck runs true (and the testbar), Qualcut are another quality Sheffield firm for any one who has not herd of them

By the way my test instrumentation is all from quality manufacturers and tool room inspection quality


Circlip

The problem is where the MT 2 arbour joins the chuck housing and is that bad once on the machine you see it wobbling. But you are correct for asserting exactly where the highpoint of the bend is It will be difficult to press straight, due to not being able to press exactly where its needed, however, it dose look as if it is in two pieces hence my original question where as my R8 chuck is defiantly of one piece manufacture.

Richmond

The first thing I did was clean the MT socket and check for high spots and dings. In addition as mentioned above the test bar and my second chuck run true (enough for me at any rate), but thanks for mentioning it as sometimes the most obvious is easily overlooked

Thank to all who replied

Wayne

[ravensworth2674]

Wayne,
OK, there is something which doesn't quite add up.
If your Clarkson chuck is a Clarkson as you say, then it has far less opportunity to be out than a cheap one.
Do you have a knackered collet? Do you have a burr( per Keith)
Do you have dirt? or is the peg( I'm guessing) worn or mis-aligned.

I seriously think that you should have a through strip down and clean and then blue the parts in where possible.

I'm looking for 15 thous on my RF30. I'm going to have to get the Jo blocks out to look for bettering it bit by bit.

Let us know. We all drop 'goolies', it is part of the learning curve

Norman

[wayne]

I Don't Need to blue anything up its out plain and simple and its the main body outside and inside compared to the mt2 arbor, i am wondering though if it has been converted to MT2, however i would have thought the main body would have been hardened making this difficult

[ravensworth2674]

Wayne,
So Ian( Circlip) is nearest about putting it between centres!

So, if you had made a dummy end to fit the collet and centred it, you could have put it in your lathe betwen centres and found the throw from what can be gleaned now as a botched job

So, tongue in cheek, get a Clarkson- but a T&C.

To be serious, I do have a Quorn and a Kennet but this dirt cheap old rustbucket is only limited by my imagination.

Cheers

Norman

[kneedeepinswarf]

[quote i am wondering though if it has been converted to MT2

Genuine MT2 Clarkson chucks usually have a threaded collar which can be screwed against the end of the milling machine spindle, after the draw-bar has been fully tightened, to increase the stiffness of the set-up. This collar was not used on MT3 and larger chucks. If yours does not have this collar, it might well be a converted MT3 chuck.