www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Hi

I bought a lathe last year and have been very unhappy with it.
The chuck is not self centering and is a nightmare to work on.

It is as follows
Micro lathe II 4500
3/4 16 SAE

I wish to buy a 3 or preferable 4 jaw self centering chuck like my wood lathes have.

Any help would be really appreciated

thanks

You have to centre work in a 4 jaw chuck using a dial gauge, and by tightening or loosening the jaws slightly until you get the centring you need.
It's a more accurate way of centring work than a 3 jaw chuck, which IIRC gives around 0.001" accuracy, but it's more fiddly and not as handy.
You can, I believe, get self centring 4 jaw chucks as well as the more common 3 jaw ones.
Which one(s) you get depend on what you mostly do.
You obviously need to get chucks that have the right thread or fitting type, and will fit your machine.
I've never needed to buy a lathe chuck, but I'd try model engineering supplies as well as eBay and so on.
What you seem to have found out though is the fact that lathes are extremely useful and versatile, but you need a great deal of extra tooling and equipment to get the best out of them!

Thanks

I do have a dial gauge
Do you think there is likely to be a problem with the thread being 16 sae? (i thought that was an american standard) as I really would like to get a self centering chuck.

Just dug this lathe out having created some room (during lockdown I built a 22ft x 15ft workshop) so found space for it, now I need it to function properly.
As a retired chippy I can now "play"

What is that saying "sawdust is Man glitter"

As I said, I've never bought a chuck, and only have an ancient "Exe" round bed lathe that I do the odd bit of metal turning I need on.
Seems there are plenty of adaptors available.
One of my chucks has a sort of replaceable plate like a small faceplate on the back so you could change threads if needed.

The thread you have is the same as UNF. https://britishfasteners.com/threads/unf.html

Thank you

do you know what adapter I would need, as in something that would fit on a chuck such as this one from banggood please
SANOU-34-Jaws-Wood-Lathe-Chuck-50mm-63mm-Manual-Chuck-Self-centering-DIY-Metal-Wood-Lathe-Tools-p-1604495.html?rmmds=search&ID=43260&cur_warehouse=CN

I removed the http etc

Does that mean that 16 sae = 3/4 unf please ?

If you look there under the thread form image in the link I gave it says it's the same thread.
Assuming SAE means "Standard American Engineer's"
Dunno about the right adaptor though.
You need to know both the threads.

All sorted now thanks

I always thought the thread was a bit iffy, however I tried one from one of my wod lathes and it works fine so now just a quick swap over when needed.

A woodchuck is fine as long as you don't need great precision

I have a Sieg c1 for the odd bits I do, that's had quite a few mods done to it over the years

Ah. its the tiny taig lathe

http://www.micro-machine-shop.com/acces ... the_chucks

just looked up the 3 jaw taig chuck $70 (1050) https://taigtools.com/product/3-jaw-3-1 ... oll-chuck/