What did you do today?

[Baz]

We had double summer time for a couple of years in the UK I think, maybe in the seventies.
Nails are great when repairing things, rusty screws suck ten times worse. It's only that everyone now has a battery drill to whack screws in that it has become all the rage. In 20-30 years doing any house repairs will be a real pain. Many of the different nail types were designed for the purpose for which they are used and to be removable eg wire flooring nails (for planks not chipboard floors of course)

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

Nail guns with blunt stainless steel nails are an absolute joy to use.

[Cenedd]

Cut a taper on the mill.....with the stock flat on the table and the head not tilted. No, I'm it sure how I did it either!
Also, touched off, wound it down 2.5mm.....and took a 4.5mm depth of cut!
I can only guess that the cutter wasn't quite held firm in the collet...but I'd have expected it to slide up and give a lower DoC not higher and getting worse as I cranked the table right to left. Glad it was aluminium, a 4.5mm DoC in steel would probably have been disastrous on my mill!

[vpt]

stripped a couple axles.

[Mark Rand]

Cut a taper on the mill.....with the stock flat on the table and the head not tilted. No, I'm it sure how I did it either!
Also, touched off, wound it down 2.5mm.....and took a 4.5mm depth of cut!
I can only guess that the cutter wasn't quite held firm in the collet...but I'd have expected it to slide up and give a lower DoC not higher and getting worse as I cranked the table right to left. Glad it was aluminium, a 4.5mm DoC in steel would probably have been disastrous on my mill!

Endmills tend to work down if a bit loose in the collet/holder. It's because the endmill's helix generates a downwards force on the tool as it cuts. Pity really, although a few spoiled pieces or broken endmills help one to remember to tighten everything up before making a cut.

[Cenedd]

Oh I don't doubt it was my fault :-D Was just trying to make sense of it. If downwards isn't as unexpected as it was in my head, that helps, cheers.

[RichR]

Oh I don't doubt it was my fault :-D Was just trying to make sense of it. If downwards isn't as unexpected as it was in my head, that helps, cheers.

I've had it go both ways. In the image below it walked down as the cutter approached the rear jaw of the vise on the right side:


On a different project while counter boring some holes, the counter bores became shallower and shallower as the cutter walked upwards.

[J Tiers]

End mills like to pull out, as the forces are pulling. Unless they are pretty dull (or you forget and do not use a centercutting type), you do not have to feed them down with much force.

Counterbores have to be fed into the work with some force, so it would be fairly natural for them to be forced up

[MrFluffy]

And that is why I love my clarkeson autolock chucks on the manual mill. I'd go 100% to clarkeson on my cnc mill as well as the manual, if it hadn't have come with so many ER collet chucks in qc30 that I'd be throwing thousands of dollars of tooling away, so I get to feel your pain of cutters walking when they're not completely tighened on rare occasions still to remind me how much I like the clarkeson system.

[Cenedd]

Thanks guys. It's comforting to know that it's not just me It also seems to be that someone else's collets/taper are a better system than the one you have! Interesting chuck that the Clarkson. I've seen the threaded cutters for it - think I have one or two even - but wasn't aware of their intended use.

[MrFluffy]

I'm cursed with multiple methods, I have 5c, ER, weldon flat's, nikken's, a size that only fits my schaublin rotab, some other odd collets I don't know the designation of and burnerd multisizes too, but for the milling for me the clarkeson's are my favourite, so there's no "my collet system is better than everyone elses" going on, since I use whatever I have generally..
The autolock's grip really well and are consistent, but the downside is if you have a hard crash with them, it can be fun getting the chuck to release the cutter as it self tightens with the additional torque, also there's a tiny cone inside the chuck that can get damaged in a hard crash that locates the end of the cutter central, but these are changeable if they get too wrecked. Plus its awkward to make up special cutters (though I've done it for the largest size ones using the lathe to thread the clarkeson thread on a arbor)
There's also quite a range of clarkeson collet sizes, both metric and imperial, which can lead to its own special different circle of holding hell.

[Cenedd]

Sorry, didn't mean it like that. I meant more that is seems everyone else's system is better than the one I have....and I figured it was probably a 'grass is greener' situation for everyone. For example, having seen them used on YouTube, I was convinced the 5C collets were clearly better than ER. It wasn't until I was educated in their downsides (mainly that workpiece moves as you tighten it so the depth-stop doesn't always work as expected) that I realised it's going to be one of those pros and cons to every type. I do swear at my Morse tapers for being a pain to release....but I'm not sure whether other systems (R8, Int 30 etc) would be perfect either....not that I have the cash to change anyway.

[MrFluffy]

I didn't take it as critique in any way, so no worries.
I think with collets, everyone mostly goes with what fits their machine(s), unless they're one of those rarified lucky souls who get to choose during machine selection. Me? I rehome anything that can be made to work that I can drag home in budget then worry about if it fits into my current collet collection later. The only thing thats on borrowed time is the rotab that uses W20 collets, because I only have two of them, but I keep it because its a pneumatically locked unit so I can use it in the machine tank of the edm "just in case".
Adaptors cover some of the gaps, I use 5c-ER adaptors quite a lot because I have a mix of the two in my collet blocks/cheap spindex's etc.
I've got one somewhere that goes between int40 and harrison early l5 lathe threaded nose, because I was using my faceplate off my original harrison as part of a large flycutter arrangement for resurfacing cylinder blocks/heads in a single pass and I had this notion that being able to mount a 3 or 4 jaw in the machine spindle of a mill might get me out of jail some day. I'll probably make a int40 to L00 for the same reasons as I've moved to l00 for a lathe chuck standard now, and maybe a L00 to int40/30 later so I can use the milling machines toolking on my lathe thats now l00. But thats a roundtuit job.
Everyone fights the issue of how to deal with this at some point, some people settle on a collet standard and get rid of their non standard stuff, others end up with drawers of different systems.
This problem is a thread on its own, indeed it has been several times already on here if you search

[RichR]

....but I'm not sure whether other systems (R8, Int 30 etc) would be perfect either....not that I have the cash to change anyway.

I use R8 and they hold just fine. Unless the operator gets distracted and forgets to use a wrench after hand tightening the drawbar, or uses a
double ended endmill and doesn't push it in far enough to get a proper grip.

[CCWKen]

R8 works for me. It works so well I had a 3/4" roughing end mill pull a 3-pound chuck of steel out of the vice. It wasn't too long after that I had a new Kurt vice to latch onto parts. I'm waiting on inserts to try out a new 5" face mill.