Great chucks. If you have a main & a sub, be sure to get the accu-length. I would get the accu-length anyways since it gives you more versatility later. The rubber between the collets have a lifetime guarantee. If that cracks or tears of the collet, call them up and you should be able to get it replaced free of charge. I'd also order through a distributor, they should be able to give you a discount off of list price. If not, try another distributor. I'm sure someone will.

It's a cleaner 4140. Run the same speeds & feeds, but you'll get better tool life. It can work harden, but not nearly like an H-13.

It's milling for small parts. I've milled and turned hard steels quite a bit, but with the amount of cobalt and nickel in this material, I would suspect that it's tough. The info you gave was good and provides some baseline to work off of.

Thanks for the response. The chipload recommendation helps.

Anyone have experience machining this? Looks like the machinability is 25-10%. Any suggestions on tooling that worked well? https://www.ssa-corp.com/documents/Data Sheet AerMet100.pdf

Hexagon Metrology has the best one on the market. There is another one from OGP that is also good. Expect to pay from $55k-65K depending on options. One can be had for less, but will not have a lot of the options you will eventually need.

Been there and lived that. Companies pushing for sales, sales, sales. Nevermind that we also have to make the product. And don't even ask about investing in the capital or personnel training. Companies like this overvalue the sales side and from what I've seen don't care about the production side of the business or the people on that side of the business. That's also why I'm not still and my former employer and ran out.

Thanks. I did find that earlier. I just need to work on integrating it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a small parts vacuum? I'm looking for something that would attach to the pneumatic parts catcher and would suck the small parts out of the sub collet. This is for a Tsugami BE2-V.

We had a couple of Kaeser screw compressors and they were great. We started with a 25HP and when we needed to add on, put another 25HP in. They were plumbed so the 2nd one would only kick on when pressure got low and the first couldn't keep up. They would also idle when it hit set pressure. Very few issues with them and they lasted many years. Main thing for any compressor is regular service and to make sure they are in a room that they don't get too hot or cold.

Try greasing it first. A chuck can lose 25% of it's gripping power if not greased that shift. The longer it's not greased, the more holding power it loses. I assume you're barfeeding, so it's rather odd that it would only be on the last 4 parts. Insert could have been wearing as well.

It depends a bit on the type of work you do. We are not a job shop and have product lines that we manufacture. Almost all parts are square or round, so workholding is always very straight forward. I figure it's a lost art both from our shops experience and from the people that I've interviewed. We all know the job market is tight and hard to find employees. Finding an experienced programmer/machinist where his experience actually means something is like a diamond in the rough. That's my 2C and you can take it for what it's worth.

Thanks for the replies. I agree that workholding is a lost art. It's hard to learn workholding creativity without going through the experience.

Nice crane part. That's an odd shape, but still within your chuck diameter, so balancing is key as you did. The swing would be your definite max diameter. However, we've got a Doosan Lynx with a 6" chuck. Doosan states that max turning diameter is 12.5". Since there's not enough space put on a larger chuck, I would doubt that putting 12"dia on a 6" chuck is the smartest idea. On another lathe, we've got a 10" chuck. I've chucked larger than the chuck diameter before, but what safety factor would you say is ok? 2, 4, 6in larger than chuck diameter?

Just wondering what the general rule of thumb on how large a part can be chucked in a given chuck size. For instance, if you have a 10" chuck, can you chuck larger than the chuck diameter? I know that there are ways to do so, but am wondering what the industry norm is.