Thread: What collets

Dont bother with alibaba,

FULL ER11 COLLET SET 13 PCS CNC MILLING LATHE #A02 - eBay (item 110556474029 end time Aug-06-10 07:29:14 PDT)

Not sure on the quality personally but I know a few here have purchased from this seller.



T/T is a International Bank Transfer aka Telegraphic Transfer
L/C Letter of Credit (never done this one before.) Mostly for big orders I think.

TT the bank charges you $50 AUD and then you normally have to pay the fees on the receivers end $30-50 USD.

Personally I've never had an issue with Western Union but I always test out the supplier first. Fees to china are around $25.

Bob

My advise will always be to get some imperial collets.

Easily 99% of the tools I use in my high speed spindle have either 1/8" or 1/4" shaft.

These are the sizes I will bet you use most of the time in a router.

There does not seem to be any good reason to use metric collets when imperial are now just as easily available. (up until recently imperial were more difficult to obtain)

Yes metric collets will hold imperial sizes and imperial collets will hold imperial shafts.

A 3.5mm collet will squeeze down to grip a 1/8" (3.175mm) shaft, but it is less than ideal and will not support the tool as well as a correctly sized collet.

If you use a mixture of metric and imperial shafted tools then get a metric set plus a 1/8" and 1/4"

I would just get an imperial set because that is what most of my tooling is.

Greg

ER11 COLLET SET 12 PCS IN INCH SIZES CNC MILLING#F58 - eBay (item 110553682267 end time Jul-30-10 13:53:42 PDT)

Hi Bob
For what its worth I have bought a number of collet sets, boring heads, and tooling from CTC (Gregs link) without any problem.
Quality is better not to mention the price than that popular local company!
Cheers
David

CTC have their own site and you can still pay by Paypal.
Here is a listing for collets.
Lately I have been using their HSS end mills for cutting acrylic on the CNC. Sharper than carbide and well priced from CTC.

I got mine from CTC, and was completely happy with them. But suggest that you might need to get a compatible nut to go with them. I found that the collets wouldn't fit mine, and had an additional wait until I could use the collets.

I have a set of 11's from the same supplier, couldnt be happier, the difference is they really are not suitable for an industrial mill becuase you actually get some tool creep, but for our purposes they are well and truly over and above