Quote:
Originally posted by Gooserider
LR - I have a few problems with my toolholding - given the increasing frustration I'm going through with this POS machine, I'm reluctant to spend very much money on tooling that I would probably sell with it if I put it on E-bay (increasingly likely!) The machine has an MT-3 taper which makes stuff hard to find and expensive compared to R-8. Currently I have 3/16", 1/4" and 3/8" bitholders, and an NR-40 collet chuck with collets for 1/2", 5/8", 3/4", 7/8" and 1" bits (the 3/8" came with the machine, the rest I picked up at a used equipment place) I also have an MT-2 collet chuck (Harbour Freight, unsure of taper) with collets for 3/8-5/8, and smaller sizes on backorder. I have a used tang style MT-2 / MT-3 adapter that I need to drill out so I can use a drawbolt on it, and mount the MT-2 chuck.
Gooserider
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www.littlemachineshop.com has a nice MT3 quick change collet set that I have for when I bought my mini mill a while back, before I changed it to an R8 spindle and CNC'ed it...pretty decent set...8 collets ranging from 1/8th-5/8th " in 1/8th increments for around $129 and they also have a plain MT3 collet set 7 piece set for $59......
www.micromark.com has the same quick change collet set for around the same price.Micromark also has collet blanks that you can make your own custom sized collets with for $10 a pop for the QC collet set mentioned above.
Ebay is a good source for cheaper priced ER collet sets , but MT3 is hard to come by though (R8 is too). A few weeks after I spent nearly $400 on mine, A set became available on Ebay for a fraction of the price....figures huh?
Take my advise and get an endmill or two designed for aluminum cutting, with higher helixed flutes and see what I mean about it taking care of your innability to cut the normal depth in Copper at faster feedrates. They cost a little more but they last as long or longer than an ordinary carbide endmill in ordinary stock (not Cu). Hell Ive even cut blocks without using coolant at all with these high helix endmills and surprisingly they didnt gum up like a standard helix endmill does WITH coolant(not advisable though.....)