Is there a decent Aliexpress collet set?

[Ewalk02]

I understand a good ER20 collet set will run around $200 - $300 but the ones on Aliexpress are so cheap I'm tempted to order one and just see what comes. Has anyone had good luck with ER20 collets from Aliexpress? If so what store did you use?

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[konwey]

Just 100 dollars. I'm from China. I know

[Ewalk02]

Just 100 dollars. I'm from China. I know

I'm not sure what that means.

[rodw]

Try these guys. I've bought a lot of tooling from them and they are popular in Australia
Tool & Work Holding - ER Collets - Page 1 - CTC Tools

[NIC 77]

I haven't done this yet. The ones I bought years ago for a router cost alot of $$$ and weren't from China (well, who knows, perhaps they were made there but I didn't know). Although I did get a few extra sizes, the quality seemed about the same as the ones that came with the router.

Sorry I can't give you better council, but what I will say, is that if you do order something, please post a review, my inquiring mind would like to know also!

I have an ISO 30 spindle now, I may need some collets depending on what tool holders I can find.

[handlewanker]

Hi.....Based on which came first the chicken or the egg scenario........if you have a "good" collet and a cheap chuck you will (could) get runout.

On the other hand, if you have a good chuck and cheap collets you also could get runout.

That means you also need to have a good spindle taper to ensure the chuck and collet are being held accurately or you could get runout.

A poor man always pays twice is a very real phrase to apply with any cheap tooling.

You "can" rework tool holders if you have the time, knowledge and equipment to do it, but time being a cost factor is part of the equation if you lose money doing a rework instead of making parts that sell.

What is the saving on a $25 chuck compared to a $100 chuck if the down time for rework cost parts not being made.......hobby workers are not in this category as price is the prime mover in that case, but rework knowledge and lots of spare disposable income will play a factor here too.

The other side of the coin is to determine what degree of runout is tolerable.....a factor that will determine if a cheepie is a goody or not.

You can mill all day with a runout of .10 mm but don't expect to get the size right if you don't know how big the "new" diameter of the cutter is with the runout.

I'd like to see how people come to terms with cheap tooling and any rework attempts they apply.......I have a few ideas of my own.
Ian.

[NIC 77]

Handlewanker,

I have limited experience on this subject compared to others.

That being said, when dealing with my POS Hitachi routers, I found that the runout was a result of poor machining in the router nose, causing the collets to not sit perfectly aligned. There was no difference between the cheap collets that came with it and the expensive think and tinker collets I bought that I could find.

I reduced the runout significantly with some well placed masking tape inside the spindle nose. Of course, this doesn't last too many tool changes and was always a PITA. But it did work, and it did make a huge difference. No Joke. Reduced it from about 0.009 (or more) to about 0.002".

I am now building an entirely different class of machine with an ISO 30 spindle.

As far as the collets from China are concerned, I assume they will be fine. Definitely interested in hearing more reviews though.

What collets are made in the US or Canada, or Europe, Australia, Japan, for a reasonable price? And do we know if these are made there or if they are simply imported from China by a US or other company under their brand?

[handlewanker]

Hi......before I get blown out of the water by a certain individual who thinks he's God's gift to all machinists,....... I will state that I have a brand new CNC mill.....long story etc........and I also acquired a set of ten ER 32 chucks to go with it..........50% of those chucks had a run out of between .002" to 005".........that was a totally crap situation.

Investigation on the spindle taper bore, ER chucks and collets revealed that the spindle taper was 100% true while the chucks had the ER tapers running out as much as ,002" to .005".

To rectify the situation will require the ER bores in the chuck to be reground to remove a couple of thou at most to get them to run true.

This is much easier to achieve than attempting to regrind the tool shank taper and won't affect the squeeze down fit of the ER collet.

Then the collets can be investigated as they are a cheap set but do run true in my manual mill ER32 chuck.

I have a tool and cutter grinder so the job shouldn't take much stress to achieve, but it can also be done using a mill table to set up a die grinder etc.

Regrinding a collet to cure runout means you need to mount it on a respective spindle diam between centres and grind a few thou off the two outer tapers at most and this won't affect the depth of the case hardening.

This will not affect the fit of the collet in the chuck as it has quite a bit of axial travel when tightening on a cutter shank.

What it will give you is a cheap off the shelf ER chuck and collet set that will run dead true which is the ultimate desire.
Ian. .

[NIC 77]

Hi......before I get blown out of the water by a certain individual who thinks he's God's gift to all machinists,.......

I'm certainly not that sir. LOL. Not even remotely close. I hope you are referring to someone I may have had a disagreement with in the past and not myself. If I'm God's gift to anything it's to the women. Bow chicka wow. Yep. They love me.

I will state that I have a brand new CNC mill.....long story etc........and I also acquired a set of ten ER 32 chucks to go with it..........50% of those chucks had a run out of between .002" to 005".........that was a totally crap situation.

Investigation on the spindle taper bore, ER chucks and collets revealed that the spindle taper was 100% true while the chucks had the ER tapers running out as much as ,002" to .005".

That's exactly it. It was the chucks that had bad machining where the collets would seat. But how many of the actual collets were causing the problems?

To rectify the situation will require the ER bores in the chuck to be reground to remove a couple of thou at most to get them to run true.

Personally, I have no proper tools to do this. Who does? To regrind the taper the collet sits in? What is required for this?

Have you had any experiences where the actual collets were to blame? The OP is looking to buy collets, not chucks. Although, I was thinking about buying chucks on Aliexpress, so info there is useful too.

[RCaffin]

I have cautiously bought some Chinese tooling from 'known' Asian sources.
As far as I can see, what I bought was made on German CNC machines to DIN standards. Testing seemed to confirm their meeting the DIN standards.

The problem with the Chinese is that they WILL make whatever you want to your price point - but you will get the matching quality. You want to shave another dollar or two of the price - 'yeah, sure, we can do that'. But YGWYPF

Cheers
Roger

[handlewanker]

Yeah, aren't all hobbyists bargain hunters?.....we live in hope that our humble needs will be filled by inexpensive tooling......if you earn your crust of bread with your machinery then going the cheap path is a short journey to lots of down time.or rework.

At the same time you can get cheap stuff to be good if you're prepared to do a bit of fiddling with it.

I think it will take many posts to describe the process for reworking cheap ER collet chucks and collets to be top notch stuff.....but it can be done with quite modest equipment.

I would conclude that if the cheap ER tooling is too out of spec to enable machining with any degree of confidence in the accuracy department.....you either fix it or go to side lock tooling that only has a hole to worry about........the cheap ones can run out too but the more expensive ones should be good.

That would be the cheapest route to go down as there are no collets or taper interfaces to have a run out in.

I would guess that a single size decent side lock tool would be cheaper than an ER chuck and a basic set of collets for the few shank diams that end mills and slot drills need.

It would be interesting to test this theory out by someone posting a few prices for comparison..
Ian.

[handlewanker]

I'm certainly not that sir. LOL. Not even remotely close. I hope you are referring to someone I may have had a disagreement with in the past and not myself. If I'm God's gift to anything it's to the women. Bow chicka wow. Yep. They love me.



That's exactly it. It was the chucks that had bad machining where the collets would seat. But how many of the actual collets were causing the problems?



Personally, I have no proper tools to do this. Who does? To regrind the taper the collet sits in? What is required for this?

Have you had any experiences where the actual collets were to blame? The OP is looking to buy collets, not chucks. Although, I was thinking about buying chucks on Aliexpress, so info there is useful too.

Hi Nic, no I wasn't referring to you personally.....some other over the pond geezer who keeps criticising my posts and follows me around like a bad smell..... I think he's having a late mid life crisis.
Ian.

[Ewalk02]

Just to clear up a few things, I'm just in this for hobby so cheap tooling is right up my alley. If I were in a production environment then I'd gladly pony up the cash for tooling of known quality. With that said I decided to order a set of ER20 collets from Shars, they seem like a middle ground between Aliexpress and MSC. They might be the same collets that Aliexpress sells but at least if I'm unhappy I'll be able to return the collets without issue.

Once the collets come in I'll try to do a quick review of them...more to come.

[handlewanker]

Hi.......I think you'll find they ALL come from the same factory in China........just different suppliers who source their stuff offshore.

Provided you don't freak out if your cutter have a run out of .002" to .004"......then the cheap stuff will work just as good and hold cutters just as well as the most expensive tooling you can buy........that problem will be more so when you go down to the very small diams.

What you won't know is if the run out is in the collet or the tool holder.

BTW.......if a 10mm diam cutter shows a run out of .04mm then the diam of that cutter is effectively 10.08mm........so as long as you know the actual cutting circle diam it won't matter a all........a shallow test slot cut with a run out cutter will give you the "real" diam of the cutter anyway.

Sometimes people get too stressed out when cheap tooling doesn't quite perform like their expensive counterparts.
Ian.

[jahnj0584]

I bought a 20$ ER11 set, the only one I checked had about 0.00035 runout. Thats acceptable to me!