The worst thing these days is buying bits that are bent from the factory, and/or they are crap steel and/or not heat treated properly. I spend the money on good ones.
@@jonesingaround3260 🤣🤣🤣. But now you know how to do it, and do it on a budget. We also now, know how to fully disassemble and field dress any Jacobs style chuck, and put it back together. This one was a treasure trove of info 👍
As a German, while seeing this I wonder why all of you in the US use still use Chucks that require Keys while we in Germany almost always use Keyless chucks ( like we all use on Cordless drills) because they have the same or better nominal accuracy ( 0.04mm/1.5 Thou) which for german Brands I believe. They cost the same or less than some of the Chucks shown here, but if I am missing something please educate me.
I’m not sure there’s any one reason. A lot of people do use keyless chucks here, but keyed are still very common. I think some people feel they can get a better hold on a drill bit with keyed than with keyless, and others just use keyed because that’s what they’ve always used.
An arbor press will add a whole new dimension to your workshop. The feedback you get from an arbor press is incredibly useful to prevent damaging press fit parts during assembly. In my humble early start over 20 years ago, I first purchased a new and cheap 2 ton import arbor. Soon understood why some presses have ratchets driving the pinion. Go for a ratcheting arbor press, you will thank me later. I ultimately picked up a WW2 era Dake 6 ton arbor press. This can either be 3 ton single leverage, or 6 ton compound leverage. I removed all the paint, cleaned it up, repainted. Looks like new and is a joy to use. Good luck.
Great video. For arbor presses, as they are very simple tools, you might think it's a simple choice to make, but there are important considerations to make before you spend your money. The first consideration should be the specifics of how you intend to use the press, and size requirements. For example, I own two old Greenerd presses, a 3a and a No.1, both from the 1960's. The 3a is a 3 ton lever press with 45:1 leverage, obviously designed for bigger work. It's very heavy and resides on it's own stand, the entire package weighing over 500 pounds. Both Greenerds have round rams, which I find to be better than square rams, mostly due to the ease of making your own custom bending/punching/stamping attachments for the ram. The No.1 is a 1/4 ton press that is very refined for pin setting, inserting tiny bearings, riveting small items like custom holsters, etc. It weighs about 20 pounds and is easy to pick up and take to where the work is. This little press does the work that would be way too clumsy on the big press. It came from the factory with provisions designed into it for mounting a variety of attachments to the ram (counter bored with locking grub screw) , which are must have items for certain types of work. Square ram presses also sometimes have this option, but it's less prevalent. Why do I think the round ram is best? The bore and ram are both precision ground for the best fitment. This means no slop, no adjustment needed, and filth has a hard time getting where it shouldn't be because the press frame is it's own wiper. When is the last time you saw a square quill on a drill press? They can just as easily bore a round spindle hole in a square shaft. Round shafts operate more fluidly. Then there is point of contact... if you have to press a large bearing out of something, a round ram has more contact. Say, for example, from 12 to 2 o'clock along it's edge, rather than two small points of contact at the corners of a square shaft. More contact, less likely to mar something. A totally reasonable option for pressing small work is to chuck up a gauge pin in your drill press. It's not ideal, but it can get the job done in a pinch. The cheapo Chinese presses can be tinkered with until they function smooth and well. However, the casting is kind of crappy on most cheapo presses so they aren't as robust, or they are way heavier than needed because they figure more iron will compensate for weak iron. Also, they don't have the want or care to machine them square and true, so the rams aren't often perfectly perpendicular to the table or plate. They work, just not well. My suggestion would be to watch the industrial auctions for a nice old press. Look for Greenerd (my obvious preference), Dake, or Famco. Look for one that hasn't been hammered to death by the maintenance apes. The argument for this misuse is that a $2k press is sacrificial if you have to destroy it fixing a machine that earns $10k per hour when it's online. So use a keen eye when watching the auctions... if the top of the ram is mushroomed from being pounded by a sledge hammer, steer clear. I bought an old Famco 3 ton with a ram that was just murdered. I got it for $25 in hopes that it could be salvaged. In the end, even after I removed the smashed end of the ram, the hammering had left the ram ever so slightly bent, so it never could be properly adjusted. Most old presses have the company and model cast into the frame, which is a telltale sign that it's not some crappy Chinese press. Some newer (yet still old iron) presses will have a nice asset tag riveted to the frame. This is also okay, but if it's got a sticker slapped on it, from any brand, just know that it is newer production and you will know it when you use it. These are things to watch for in auction pictures. Lastly, unless you are using the press for broaching, or parts that need a long stroke, you DO NOT need to spend the money on a ratcheting press. Yes, if you find an old one cheap, they are preferred, but not a must. A hand wheel opposite the lever is much handier in most cases where you are production pressing or situations where you need to be delicate. Just lock the lever mid shaft so it doesn't add any input to the ram, and use the hand wheel to get things started. These are just my opinions based on years of use in machine shops, as well as my home shop use. Everyone has their preference, which is cool. I buy and sell a lot of machine tools, refurbishing and repairing them for resale and when I find something spectacular, it stays in my shop. I hope this helps someone.
That was a great comment. Thank you for taking the time to leave such a detailed and thoughtful post. I appreciate your insight. I'll be keeping an eye out for Greenerd, Dake, and Famco when they come available. Thanks again!
Tom Lipton (Ox Tools) has a couple videos restoring and testing a very rough 18N with good details, specifically about jaw timing. Look for "Zombie to Lazarus Chuck Restoration". You might be able to find new old stock parts to fix up that 1990's chuck you have, if it's worth it to you. Side note: I'm old enough to remember when stuff coming out of Japan in the 50's-70's was considered "crap" by most people.
I've been using Jacobs chucks in my home shop for 40 years. Way back in the late 70's thru the early 90's, I'd run across them at garage sales and flea markets. Got a box full of super chucks when I bought my first mill, a clapped out Bridgeport Round Ram, probably worth more than the mill was. Once the internet thing caught on, I've picked up some nice stuff on Fleabay for peanuts. I now use vintage Jacobs Super Chucks pretty much exclusively in the shop, all have under 0.002" of runout after servicing, a couple required new jaws and/or arbors. I've got a few junkers too that I couldn't get the runout decent on, one looked just about new but had clearly suffered some sort of crash that distorted the body. With cleaned & lubed Super Chucks, I can just hand tighten them when using smaller drills without the drill slipping. Regarding arbor presses, I've always been a big Dake fan, have a model 1 1/2 in the shop. If you plan on doing broach work, extra ram clearance height is needed for larger broaches.
Few years ago during my military service in south korea, I had a chance to compare M2 browning barrels from 40's USA and 90's Korea. They were both parkarized and stored in same coditions, but 40's had almost no rust while 90's were in trouble. And I really loved those old ameriacan tools (except they were inch standard) for maintanence, Now I started a samll garage shop and I can't find those tools in the market...
Great video. A mfg whether it is US based or not has a set price to make something or out source it. So it makes sense the newer Jacob's China chuck is perfectly fine.
The thing about "Made in China" is that you get what you pay for You can get utter garbage from China - and the USA, but you can also get worldbeating quality "Chinesium" is a product of buyers racing to the bottom, not makers doing it
I have a Baileigh arbor press that I always really liked. I used a Drake compound leverage arbor press that was really nice to use. I think the Drake was rated at 12ton! Sometimes a ratcheting arbor press can come in handy so check those out too. For a simple bench top press I would buy a new Baileigh again!
I have three different sizes of Jacobs Superchuck (BALL BEARING), they are the best in my opinion SH. The CHINAMAN CHUCK IS JUST JUNK, WITH A GOOD PRICE THAT YOU CANNOT COUNT ON AT ALL. Nice video fella too. Peace vf 😀😀😀😀😀
Thanks for this -- it's great to see the differences, and refreshing to know we can rely on new Chinese Jacobs chucks for accuracy. As for an arbor press, my recommendation would be to just look for a good, used Dake press. Far better than any new Chinese press you can buy today. The quality of the old castings just can't be beat. Try to find one that has a removable rotating base plate. One good reason to buy a used Dake is that if it needs any parts replaced (missing shims is not uncommon), Dake still sells parts for all their old presses.
Thinking out loud. Sorry in advance for being critical, but detail-hunting _is_ sort of the point here. If you're trying to measure the chuck's rotational deviation, you should probably place the follower as close to the chuck as possible, just to minimize the amount of dowel pin eccentricity that gets incorporated into your reading. One more little way to reduce error. And while we're at it, just to widen the net for the type(s) of deviation you're catching, it could also be useful to run an additional test while using a thicker diameter dowel. The larger circumference/area would also better reveal what part of the error is simply pin surface imperfection.
A ground gage pin has essentially no surface errors or "eccentricity" for the purpose of this test. A drill blank or a ground dowel can be used instead. Rotational deviation. People who work in the machining world call it indicated runout, or runout for short. It will be the rare chuck that doesn't show different amounts of runout for different diameter pins As demonstrated in this video, drill chucks can undergo changes from simple servicing, it's a bit mysterious. If you are the more grease is better type, try to curb your impulses. Be aware that trying to push off the sleeve of a plain Jacobs chuck can result in a cracked sleeve. The sleeves are made a lot thinner. Drill chucks are a bit like "horseshoes and hand grenades", the chuck needs to be good enough. A couple thou runout is more than good enough, ten thou runout is more than desirable but for a lot of drilling it still works. Getting a drill chuck with essentially zero runout is occasion for happiness, but no worries if it has a couple thou. Spending a lot of money on a drill chuck (Albrecht for example) to try to get tenths is misplaced concern, and probably the chuck won't be all that perfect anyway (especially used Albrechts!) - work out of ER collets if you really need that level of accuracy. Using a drill chuck for milling is abuse, and a reason nicely made chucks end up catawampus, and floating around on ebay.
@@randydewees7338 Interesting read. Still, I think you missed both of my points. The first idea was to minimize error, theoretically. Of course we all know that on some level, precision comes down to a 'good enough' somewhere. This doesn't change the fact that the farther the follower from the pin, the more error it is going to absorb, because the pin is _transferring_ information about the chuck's eccentricity to somewhere else. Information, like government money, only gets moved in a leaky bucket: to some extent, there will always be a degradation in any transfer. Idea two was less about _reducing_ the surface area +/- and more about _revealing_ how much of that error was, in fact, surface deviation. Idea two was also about, as you said, the "rare chuck" that doesn't show different error for different pins. Rare? More like a Unicorn. I wanted to measure more than one position the chuck, because by adding in differently-sized pins and taking an average, we'd better approximate a fair measurement for what constitutes a 'quality' chuck. Note that earlier I was sort of compressing both of these two ideas together, because it's convenient that a larger diameter pin will also, incidentally, have a lower percentage of its total error coming from surface area deviation, even though, like you said, those amounts are negligible anyhow. Altogether, the entire point was about chasing perfection. I know it's silly. As an aside, in wood-work, "runout" is when a grain pattern moves out beyond one edge and onto the face, where it sometimes splinters away. Ideally, a board's grain is supposed to be straight and parallel. Ideally, a piece of wood has perfect end grain that _stays_ on the end--but, well, horseshoes and hand-grenades!
Thanks for the comment! I had the exact same thought as you and in my last chuck comparison video I measured as close to the chuck jaws as I could for that reason. But for this test I wanted to follow Jacobs' official, internal testing methodology, so I contacted them when I bought the chuck and they sent me an email with their testing procedures. Their tolerances are based on testing a pin that's half the capacity of the chuck (a 1/2 " max capacity chuck would test on a 1/4" pin), and they take their measurement 1" to 1.5" from the jaws. They also take three measurements as I did, rotating the pin 120 degrees between each one. I do think that using a thicker gauge pin would be interesting too, and now I'm curious enough I'm going to test a couple of them on a 1/2 inch pin for their max capacity to see if there is any real difference. Thanks again for the comment, I appreciate the feedback and your thoughts!
@@ShopHumor If you did that 120° rotation thing, that would cover lots of pin error. That's a pretty elegant solution. I must've missed the part about taking three measurements. There sure are lots of ways to aim for 'perfect'! Like I said, just thinking out loud.
Outside of the home-shop, in an industrial setting, i have found that the more people that use a tool over the years, the more wear and tear and abuse it gets. If i am the only one using a Jacobs chuck, it lasts forever ! It all comes down to how much do you want to spend ? And how many users and abusers are gonna have access to it.
In the 1970s you couldn't find much hardware in the U.S. manufactured in the PRC. And the first stuff I did see by way of tools were garden implements and sheet metal shears that appeared to have been made by hand in a smithshop. I went overseas and happened to pick up a set of open end wrenches made in Shanghai. The metal quality was good enough and the cross-section so slim that I could use them as bicycle cone wrenches. At this time tools from Taiwan were not worth buying. A wrench would practically deform around a bolt under high torque. With properly trained work force, attention to quality and standards and safety practices, good products can be turned out almost anywhere. But quality requires standards and measurement. Somebody has to give a damn.
I recently retired from a large US manufacturer. They were constantly struggling to get decent employees. Despite being well paid union employees the company struggled with 20% absenteeism. 1/3 of new employees failed the drug test. After advocating for US manufacturing for 40 years I've given up on the US workforce.
While you were advocating for at-home manufacturing all the kids that are filing into these companies were being educated by literal communists to hate your country and productive work in general. Sucks, huh?
This issue isn't just in manufacturing, it's everywhere. Entitlement with the past two generations as ruined the workforce. Everyone wants to make the most money for doing the least amount of work. Also, most don't want to do trade or factory jobs anymore. It's too hard for these snowflakes. Thus, construction and trade jobs are filled with immigrants who are grateful for the jobs unlike the young, lazy Americans still living at home with Mom and Dad in their late 20's.
The old Jacobs chuck appears to have a wonky body. I'm betting that if you measure runout at the nose it will be almost as bad as at the end of the gauge pin It makes you wonder about the arbor taper pocket's concentricity (or the possibility of burs in it)
Jacobs 18Ns from the 50's run about the same. Runout on the 3 in my shop is at the .0015 to .002 inch range. Plenty good enough to drill holes where they need to be.
That's been my experience as well, with the caveats: * Contract BOM must be clearly spelled out with no substitutions allowed outside of the approved second-source parts list. * Contract tolerances/specifications must be clearly spelled out, preferably with slightly tighter tolerances than you really want in the final products. * Contract calls out regular audits by home-office quality and design engineers. If you give them ANY leeway, they WILL use cheaper parts and machining tools while NOT passing along the savings to you.
Sometimes you pay little for quality as well - look at project farm videos where many products outperform super expensive stuff or difference is tiny for 5x price increase.
For some reason, many people are under impression that China means low quality. Shops in China will manufacture the parts to your order, just like in any other country. If your order spec says "cheap" for tolerance requirements, it's no wonder the parts are not spectacular. However, if your spec says 1 µm accuracy, that's what you get.
The problem with china quality is the amount of fakes and how they will restructure an entire manufacturing process the second your personal inspectors leave the door.
Machining, as a hobby, is an expensive proposition. 🤷♂️ If it weren’t for graces of companies LIKE HHIP, and Vevor, making really over specced tools for the price point, I certainly could not afford to machine as a hobby. The same goes with quality jewelers tools. Certainly the quality varies from brand to brand…but everything comes from the same molds…it boils down to fit and finish. I bought a $700 Vevor lathe. Disassembled it. Upgraded anything that I thought would improve rigidity and make it more robust, like new Chuck, new Tool rest, new live center, and gibs, and after a fun year of fiddling with my “lathe kit” and another $700, I dare say that I have a machine that probably turns as well as a similar specced $3000 machine, out of the box. Think of these budget machines as “Kits” …take them apart and DO the finish work….hone the ways and gibs, replace any flimsy parts and work on overall rigidity of the machine …for $700, out of the box…you get a $700 machine. But its a great starting point toward building a machine that functions as well as a machine that cost twice your total investment. I’ll end, with this….and i;m in no way sponsored…but I’m absolutely blown away, by the quality of some of Vevors rotary mill tables and milling/drill press tilt tables. I recently bought a Vevor 8” HV8 rotary table, on Amazon….and I got this 50lb, beautifully machined table out of the box and was in shock, at the quality. 🤯🤯🤯. I thought…”how can you even BUILD this thing, for $175 bucks….let alone SHIP it to me”
That's awesome. I completely agree with your sentiment. I appreciate value wherever I can get it, and when companies sell high quality tools for prices I can afford, I jump on them. I'm going to have to take a look at that HV8 rotary table. Also, your lathe sounds great. I've got a smallish Grizzly lathe that I picked up used and have been making some similar modifications / improvements to, along with a few repairs (the timing belt pulley needed repair, for example). Love having a lathe in the shop though.
@ yeah mines a little one too…Vevor 7x16….it’s very basic manual. I still plan to add a DRO, because theres uncorrectable slop in some of the dials…or correctable, but recurring slop…that to get any real precision, i think a digital readout and good scales, would do it. If you have a small mill, like the little grizzlys, or Klutch, or Seig (they all make mostly identical X2D models) Anyway….if you have a small benchtop mill….get the 6” vevor rotary table…i think its HV6. The 8” is a little big, if you want to mount both, it and a regular 3” mill vise. ….also, with the 8”. You might have some quill height problems with taller parts. As much as it pained me, I exchanged the 8 for a 6, which because of popular demand, was $20 more. Still WELL worth it. Thank for all your great videos…i’m a devout follower, now 👍
Nah, just go to auctions - Vevor is not needed at all. I got few things from there and I got what I paid for - fortunately I could machine them. milling/drill press tilt tables out of the box was total garbage - even fixing it was a total pain in the rear end - but it was cheap. Main issue is that machining the round parts is more or less super difficult.
Greenerd arbor presses are great. They have the push force centered on the ram. Square ram presses have the force located under the rack, or the front edge of the ram. This is why they crook broaches when people try to use them for that. ----Doozer
Pretty sure they're mostly just made in bulk by the same factory then tested for accuracy. The more accurate ones sell for a higher price and bought by higher end brands while the less accurate ones sell for a lower price and are bought by the cheaper brands. I doubt many brands actually have their own factories just for them any more
If you are willing to pay for it, Dake is the standard in my mind for arbor presses. There are other very acceptable brands. I would advise away from any Asian import regardless of the brand name. I currently own 2 Dake press variants. They are odd styles/sizes, so they get little use. I sold a Famco when I upgraded to a Famco 3R. 3R Famco increased tonnage, stroke length, and added the ratcheting drive feature. Famco no longer manufactures. They aren't quite as refined as the Dake, but are priced accordingly, so Famco can be an excellent budget option. If I find a Dake 1x2 1/2, the Famco will get a big brother or will get sold. This Dake is nicely sized for hand pressing. It has excellent stroke, ratcheting features, adjustable ram brake/clamp, AND dual tonnage functions. I don't recall the actual ratings, but I think that I remember that they exceed the 3 ton of my 3R. Gernerd makes an impressive arbor press. Palmgren used to make budget friendly crude industrial quality products. I own several vintage USA made drill press vises of various sizes and styles. All are very well made and very functional. I purchased a modern Palmgren cross vise in unused condition for $20. I thought that one of my sons or grandsons might employ it in their drill press only shops. I gave it a major work over (similar to your efforts on the chucks in this video). When I got done, it is probably worth the $20 that I paid, but I can't get any of my boys to accept it as a gift! That is currently at least 15 potential owners. It is crudely scaled in mm. I purchased a Modern Palmgren variable speed 6" bench grinder that us okay, and have seen tempting prices on the Orient sourced vises and arbor presses. They all look like disappointing low quality import rebrand junk. China can do well, but Palmgren took a quantum leap dowward when that iconic brand name went overseas. I like presses. I own 5 arbor and H frame machines up to 50 ton electric/hydraulic press. It is crude by hydraulic press standards. It started its life as a Princess Auto, but has enjoyed some aftermarket upgrades. I bought it for the features and tonnage capacity and was tempted by the $150 (bad hydraulic pump) cost. It turned out that an industrial shop maintenance hack had replaced the 3HP motor with a FHP pulley and belt and the belt was slipping on the oversized pump pulley. The proper belt and pulley cost me less than the replacement hydraulic oil. The H frame press steel looks sketchy for a 50T machine, but shows no signs of damage. I bowed 1.5" thick steel press plates .5" without it straining. I was not watching the work while looking at the pressure gauge and pump on my initial inspection. This led to discovering the slipping FHP belt. I understand that Princess Auto is the Harbor Freight of Canada. They have/ had in-house manufacturing. My machine model is now obsolete, but their current model "equivalents" are $2500-$3000. Stay away from the modern import arbor presses. You can get industrial quality vintage USA machines for the same and lower cost. Dake, Famco and Gernerd are the brands that I am familiar with. I have used many Dake and several Famco machines and owned/own both brands. Thank you for the Jacobs China chuck evaluation. I have been afraid to make that purchase plunge. Shars sells some impressive budget friendly options. I am starting to consider them for hobby shop budget upgrades/additions. I am pretty stocked up on shop capacity with iconic industrial brands largely sourced on the used market. When you purchase your arbor press, include a heavy bolt to the floor stand with work pass through features. My shop built stand includes 1" steel frame components. Without a substantial bolted to the floor stand, I couldn't get the full advantage of my 3T press.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've had a couple recommend Dake. They look pricey, but very good. I'll look out for those Famco and Greenerds as well. I really appreciate the thoughtful and detailed comment. Thank you!
Ahhh, the good old asian goo grease, otherwise known as "yak fat grease". Look it up. It was a 'thing'. ;) Your review was... very impressive! I'm sure it's TTC & PF approved.
Any country capable of putting a rover on the moon can produce quality products. The ones to blame for poor quality are the companies who knowingly request a manufacturing specification to maximize profit instead of final product quality. Just watch some videos on the topic of initial quality of Tesla cars coming out of their Chinese factory compared to the same ones built here and in Germany. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Great video! You can get good stuff from China, I guess it costs more to make them care about a product. I've taken up some machinist roles where I work, our equipment is below quality to be truthful, but I enjoy doing it. I learned a lot from someone else I worked with and I finally get to try things out.
Digging your videos! Btw, you can flip the tips on your dial indicator to more easily read a round pin like that than using the pointed tip. They just unscrew. Though doesn't look like it was that hard to line up :)
They used to make a decent arbor press. They are now all made in China, as of around 2010, and simply assembled in the USA. Their vises are now made in Taiwan and assembled here. So yeah, if you can find a filthy old gem at auction and clean it up, you'd probably have a nice press.
I work in the automotive manufacturing. Some of our German cars production has been moved to China. It was a big concern of course. But it took very little effort and time to have a perfect quality production. For comparison, it took almost 2 years to have the US factory do just a decent job. Even more surprising: the made in China cars show the best alignment and quality we have ever seen. Better than made in Germany, better than made in the US. They CAN do great quality. It is a matter of costs, requested specifications and finding the right partners.
Yep, and finding quality in the US is a tough ask. The Chinese have excelled at manufacturing technologies. They are so far ahead on solar cell and battery manufacturing techniques that it's questionable whether other countries have any chance of catching up without a complete shift in the technology itself that requires a complete manufacturing reinvention. Yes, they make and sell cheap crap. But if you pay peanuts, then only monkeys will take the work. What on earth do stupid Americans expect? And they rag on "import quality". Did you notice that Vertex chuck? Taiwanese. And half the price of the Jacobs. The Taiwanese are even better than the Chinese at manufacturing - they taught the Chinese how to do it, after all. Compare a Vertex milling vise to the very average Kurt ones they make in the US.
about a decade ago, one of the car teardown pundits said "We used to laugh at Chinese vehicles, but now they're world class and in a decade they'll be world-beating" He was right
Don't blame China based manufacturing for low quality products. Put the blame squarely on the company ordering the product and the price point they want to pay for the manufacturing. As shown in this video, if you are willing to pay for quality they will meet your expectations. Too bad that's not the formula for getting rich.
jacobs used to produce till about a decade ago in the usa supposedly they moved production, though if you need a usa made chuck find a good machine shop they still exist and certainly could thread up something, but it comes at a cost, I know not of more hand drill chuck maker here in the usa, there are tool and work holding makers here though
The state of things now is sad... I needed a vise and a "Record" vise will now set you back a couple hundred for a piece of scrap made overseas out of melted down tuna cans!! A quick search on Marketplace turned up a local guy selling an old one for 50$!! When I gat there he also said for a couple bucks extra he had a small 3" vise he could throw in as well... I snagged up both!!
The letter spacing was really wonky. Big gaps between some letters, not others. The Jacobs logo, for example, had a giant space in it that isn't supposed to be there.
The reality about "made in China" is that they can do pretty much any level of quality any other country can do BUT if you leave the Chinese to their own devices, they will cut any and every corner to improve their profits. You have to be ultra-specific and check absolutely everything they deliver. 99% of the time, when something made in China is crappy, it's because it was meant to be crappy. Because the US business that outsourced to China did so specifically to save money, and there's actually no magic trick to saving money: you have to reduce quality. The Chinese will happily make a shit product for you if that's what you require. Just don't necessarily blame it on them.
When Wall Street buys an iconic American brand the first thing they do is cut the quality So the investment fund manager can get his monthly bonus check.
At some point, precision moves into the theoretical. It's sort of a game that people play to challenge themselves. Human have been doing this from the beginning--for many hundreds of thousands of years--which is why there have been found ceremonial hand-axes that would've been too big to be useful, and others that were highly polished for no apparent purpose. Don't you ever push your limit at _something?_
That's a milling machine converted to CNC, and I use it for aluminum, brass, and steel. But generally I agree with you that drilling is not a precision operation. I use my end mills and reamers to achieve the final dimension. Thanks for watching.
Obviously you don’t do any type of precision machine tool work. 10/1000 of an inch of total indicated runout is a lot when it comes to machining metal.
It probably doesnt amount to mucj, but you are getting some cosine error since the drop indicator wasnt perfectly perpendicular to the pin in these tests, nor was it in the same exact orientation for each test. Of course that would be very hard to achieve without a decocicated fixture, plus as I said it likely didnt matter much. But it msy explain why the one chuck seemed more out of tolerance after servicing.
You've been watching some machining videos but watching a video doesn't equate to knowing anything about the subject. That indicator varies by what? +/-10 degrees? How much cosine error is that? cos15 = 0.96 so +/-4%. The indicator has that much backlash (do you know what indicator backlash is?).
@@HairyNumbNuts No need to get mean about it. Everything about this test goes beyond the limits of practical application. Perfection is theoretical, and that means it becomes prudent to strictly adhere to procedure, where error minimization becomes part of the game. Where do you draw the line at just what constitutes "knowing anything"? There have been entire books written on the subject, and, spoiler alert, it's not always practical application (do you know what epistemology is?).
Yeah absolutely. There certainly will be cosine error and hell even cranking the chuck down at different amounts of torque between pin rotations may introduce some small variance. If I had more space, time, and money, I'd love to make dedicated fixtures for that type of testing to eliminate all variables.
Very few pp got super expensive chuck in 1950s and did not use it a lot - especially in the industry so getting runout of 10 thou is nothing special - its worn out. I got few chucks from Amazon for $10 each and have sub 1 thou runout. It just does not pay to buy Jacobs original stuff when "other" China can make it for 10x or more less... Even if it were to last 3x less... still not worth it.
SC used to be famous for cheap labor. The population then as now were poorly educated, poor for the most part because agrarian economies offered few quality jobs, and that attracted business from more expensive states. The clothing industry tended to move South from the Northeast (the ruins of Patterson and other mills still exist in the NE) until even poorer agrarian areas overseas chose to compete for the same reasons. The golden age of US machinery faded in the 1970s though amazingly Wells-Index still make new knee mills (much nicer than Bridgeport one of which I own and like) and Monarch still make lathes.
I absolutely can't stand the new chi-chucks. I buy USA files and chucks on ebay and flea markets. The imports are garbage. I have a 60 year old pair of diagonal cutter pliers. They're as good as brabd new. I cut springs and piano wire with them. No chips no mushrooming. My snap on pliers chipped in the first 24 hours that I had them. Junk.
High Quality tooling has not come from USA, for a very long time. Quality tooling mostly comes from Europe, Taiwan and now China, at less than half the cost. GOOD LUCK TRUMPER 😂🇨🇦
Thanks for watching! More links in description:
- Jacobs 11N Super Chuck: amzn.to/3WFblca
- HHIP Ball Bearing Drill Chuck: amzn.to/3WAl3w3
- Colton *FAKE* Ball Bearing Chuck: amzn.to/4go24fx
Do i own a quality drill press? No, do I do any quality drilling? No, Did I watch this whole video fully invested in which is the better chuck? Yes.
The worst thing these days is buying bits that are bent from the factory, and/or they are crap steel and/or not heat treated properly. I spend the money on good ones.
Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to watch and to leave a comment. Glad you enjoyed it :)
@@jonesingaround3260 🤣🤣🤣. But now you know how to do it, and do it on a budget. We also now, know how to fully disassemble and field dress any Jacobs style chuck, and put it back together. This one was a treasure trove of info 👍
@@Baroque_Back_Mountain it's added to my brain folder of information I can randomly pull out.
I didn't even knew that precision was something people valued on a chuck and I still watched it all.
As a German, while seeing this I wonder why all of you in the US use still use Chucks that require Keys while we in Germany almost always use Keyless chucks ( like we all use on Cordless drills) because they have the same or better nominal accuracy ( 0.04mm/1.5 Thou) which for german Brands I believe. They cost the same or less than some of the Chucks shown here, but if I am missing something please educate me.
I’m not sure there’s any one reason. A lot of people do use keyless chucks here, but keyed are still very common.
I think some people feel they can get a better hold on a drill bit with keyed than with keyless, and others just use keyed because that’s what they’ve always used.
Wow, a shout out to Mr Project Farm! VERY IMPRESSIVE indeed!! 😊👍🇺🇲
1:55 Everyone loves the Mr. Project Farm guy! ❤️
1:48 everything on the chuck is wobbling, but the test pin doesn't. It seems so unnatural :D
An arbor press will add a whole new dimension to your workshop. The feedback you get from an arbor press is incredibly useful to prevent damaging press fit parts during assembly. In my humble early start over 20 years ago, I first purchased a new and cheap 2 ton import arbor. Soon understood why some presses have ratchets driving the pinion. Go for a ratcheting arbor press, you will thank me later. I ultimately picked up a WW2 era Dake 6 ton arbor press. This can either be 3 ton single leverage, or 6 ton compound leverage. I removed all the paint, cleaned it up, repainted. Looks like new and is a joy to use. Good luck.
Great video. For arbor presses, as they are very simple tools, you might think it's a simple choice to make, but there are important considerations to make before you spend your money. The first consideration should be the specifics of how you intend to use the press, and size requirements. For example, I own two old Greenerd presses, a 3a and a No.1, both from the 1960's. The 3a is a 3 ton lever press with 45:1 leverage, obviously designed for bigger work. It's very heavy and resides on it's own stand, the entire package weighing over 500 pounds. Both Greenerds have round rams, which I find to be better than square rams, mostly due to the ease of making your own custom bending/punching/stamping attachments for the ram. The No.1 is a 1/4 ton press that is very refined for pin setting, inserting tiny bearings, riveting small items like custom holsters, etc. It weighs about 20 pounds and is easy to pick up and take to where the work is. This little press does the work that would be way too clumsy on the big press. It came from the factory with provisions designed into it for mounting a variety of attachments to the ram (counter bored with locking grub screw) , which are must have items for certain types of work. Square ram presses also sometimes have this option, but it's less prevalent.
Why do I think the round ram is best? The bore and ram are both precision ground for the best fitment. This means no slop, no adjustment needed, and filth has a hard time getting where it shouldn't be because the press frame is it's own wiper. When is the last time you saw a square quill on a drill press? They can just as easily bore a round spindle hole in a square shaft. Round shafts operate more fluidly. Then there is point of contact... if you have to press a large bearing out of something, a round ram has more contact. Say, for example, from 12 to 2 o'clock along it's edge, rather than two small points of contact at the corners of a square shaft. More contact, less likely to mar something.
A totally reasonable option for pressing small work is to chuck up a gauge pin in your drill press. It's not ideal, but it can get the job done in a pinch.
The cheapo Chinese presses can be tinkered with until they function smooth and well. However, the casting is kind of crappy on most cheapo presses so they aren't as robust, or they are way heavier than needed because they figure more iron will compensate for weak iron. Also, they don't have the want or care to machine them square and true, so the rams aren't often perfectly perpendicular to the table or plate. They work, just not well.
My suggestion would be to watch the industrial auctions for a nice old press. Look for Greenerd (my obvious preference), Dake, or Famco. Look for one that hasn't been hammered to death by the maintenance apes. The argument for this misuse is that a $2k press is sacrificial if you have to destroy it fixing a machine that earns $10k per hour when it's online. So use a keen eye when watching the auctions... if the top of the ram is mushroomed from being pounded by a sledge hammer, steer clear. I bought an old Famco 3 ton with a ram that was just murdered. I got it for $25 in hopes that it could be salvaged. In the end, even after I removed the smashed end of the ram, the hammering had left the ram ever so slightly bent, so it never could be properly adjusted.
Most old presses have the company and model cast into the frame, which is a telltale sign that it's not some crappy Chinese press. Some newer (yet still old iron) presses will have a nice asset tag riveted to the frame. This is also okay, but if it's got a sticker slapped on it, from any brand, just know that it is newer production and you will know it when you use it. These are things to watch for in auction pictures.
Lastly, unless you are using the press for broaching, or parts that need a long stroke, you DO NOT need to spend the money on a ratcheting press. Yes, if you find an old one cheap, they are preferred, but not a must. A hand wheel opposite the lever is much handier in most cases where you are production pressing or situations where you need to be delicate. Just lock the lever mid shaft so it doesn't add any input to the ram, and use the hand wheel to get things started.
These are just my opinions based on years of use in machine shops, as well as my home shop use. Everyone has their preference, which is cool. I buy and sell a lot of machine tools, refurbishing and repairing them for resale and when I find something spectacular, it stays in my shop. I hope this helps someone.
That was a great comment. Thank you for taking the time to leave such a detailed and thoughtful post. I appreciate your insight. I'll be keeping an eye out for Greenerd, Dake, and Famco when they come available. Thanks again!
Old Atlas are good too. Years ago I got outbid on an Atlas #5 which would have been nice except for the size.
"... Hammered to death by the maintenance apes". Lol. 😅😅😅😅
Longest rant I ever saw on UA-cam. Didn't read it(of course) Go to Harbour Freight and get your press.
the bad chuck may have worn jaws so no amount of cleaning will change that
I bought a made in Taiwan drill press for $20. Made in 1979. Cleaned it up and checked the runout with my dial indicator. .002. Drills a good hole.
Tom Lipton (Ox Tools) has a couple videos restoring and testing a very rough 18N with good details, specifically about jaw timing. Look for "Zombie to Lazarus Chuck Restoration". You might be able to find new old stock parts to fix up that 1990's chuck you have, if it's worth it to you. Side note: I'm old enough to remember when stuff coming out of Japan in the 50's-70's was considered "crap" by most people.
Fantastic, thank you. I'll give that a look and see if it looks doable. I appreciate it!
I've been using Jacobs chucks in my home shop for 40 years. Way back in the late 70's thru the early 90's, I'd run across them at garage sales and flea markets. Got a box full of super chucks when I bought my first mill, a clapped out Bridgeport Round Ram, probably worth more than the mill was. Once the internet thing caught on, I've picked up some nice stuff on Fleabay for peanuts. I now use vintage Jacobs Super Chucks pretty much exclusively in the shop, all have under 0.002" of runout after servicing, a couple required new jaws and/or arbors. I've got a few junkers too that I couldn't get the runout decent on, one looked just about new but had clearly suffered some sort of crash that distorted the body. With cleaned & lubed Super Chucks, I can just hand tighten them when using smaller drills without the drill slipping. Regarding arbor presses, I've always been a big Dake fan, have a model 1 1/2 in the shop. If you plan on doing broach work, extra ram clearance height is needed for larger broaches.
Few years ago during my military service in south korea, I had a chance to compare M2 browning barrels from 40's USA and 90's Korea. They were both parkarized and stored in same coditions, but 40's had almost no rust while 90's were in trouble. And I really loved those old ameriacan tools (except they were inch standard) for maintanence, Now I started a samll garage shop and I can't find those tools in the market...
Great video.
A mfg whether it is US based or not has a set price to make something or out source it. So it makes sense the newer Jacob's China chuck is perfectly fine.
Loved the project farm reference lol "Very impressive!"
The thing about "Made in China" is that you get what you pay for
You can get utter garbage from China - and the USA, but you can also get worldbeating quality
"Chinesium" is a product of buyers racing to the bottom, not makers doing it
You get what you pay for - as long as you're paying peanuts. If you're paying top dollar, you're getting first run peanuts.
I have an old (pre 1960, Walker Turner) drill press, I try to keep it in good working order. When it breaks down forever, my shop days are over!
I have a Baileigh arbor press that I always really liked. I used a Drake compound leverage arbor press that was really nice to use. I think the Drake was rated at 12ton! Sometimes a ratcheting arbor press can come in handy so check those out too. For a simple bench top press I would buy a new Baileigh again!
I have three different sizes of Jacobs Superchuck (BALL BEARING), they are the best in my opinion SH. The CHINAMAN CHUCK IS JUST JUNK, WITH A GOOD PRICE THAT YOU CANNOT COUNT ON AT ALL. Nice video fella too. Peace vf 😀😀😀😀😀
What do you say about the Chinese Jacob's?
Thanks for this -- it's great to see the differences, and refreshing to know we can rely on new Chinese Jacobs chucks for accuracy. As for an arbor press, my recommendation would be to just look for a good, used Dake press. Far better than any new Chinese press you can buy today. The quality of the old castings just can't be beat. Try to find one that has a removable rotating base plate. One good reason to buy a used Dake is that if it needs any parts replaced (missing shims is not uncommon), Dake still sells parts for all their old presses.
Thinking out loud. Sorry in advance for being critical, but detail-hunting _is_ sort of the point here. If you're trying to measure the chuck's rotational deviation, you should probably place the follower as close to the chuck as possible, just to minimize the amount of dowel pin eccentricity that gets incorporated into your reading. One more little way to reduce error.
And while we're at it, just to widen the net for the type(s) of deviation you're catching, it could also be useful to run an additional test while using a thicker diameter dowel. The larger circumference/area would also better reveal what part of the error is simply pin surface imperfection.
A ground gage pin has essentially no surface errors or "eccentricity" for the purpose of this test. A drill blank or a ground dowel can be used instead.
Rotational deviation. People who work in the machining world call it indicated runout, or runout for short.
It will be the rare chuck that doesn't show different amounts of runout for different diameter pins
As demonstrated in this video, drill chucks can undergo changes from simple servicing, it's a bit mysterious. If you are the more grease is better type, try to curb your impulses.
Be aware that trying to push off the sleeve of a plain Jacobs chuck can result in a cracked sleeve. The sleeves are made a lot thinner.
Drill chucks are a bit like "horseshoes and hand grenades", the chuck needs to be good enough. A couple thou runout is more than good enough, ten thou runout is more than desirable but for a lot of drilling it still works. Getting a drill chuck with essentially zero runout is occasion for happiness, but no worries if it has a couple thou. Spending a lot of money on a drill chuck (Albrecht for example) to try to get tenths is misplaced concern, and probably the chuck won't be all that perfect anyway (especially used Albrechts!) - work out of ER collets if you really need that level of accuracy. Using a drill chuck for milling is abuse, and a reason nicely made chucks end up catawampus, and floating around on ebay.
@@randydewees7338 Interesting read. Still, I think you missed both of my points. The first idea was to minimize error, theoretically. Of course we all know that on some level, precision comes down to a 'good enough' somewhere. This doesn't change the fact that the farther the follower from the pin, the more error it is going to absorb, because the pin is _transferring_ information about the chuck's eccentricity to somewhere else. Information, like government money, only gets moved in a leaky bucket: to some extent, there will always be a degradation in any transfer.
Idea two was less about _reducing_ the surface area +/- and more about _revealing_ how much of that error was, in fact, surface deviation. Idea two was also about, as you said, the "rare chuck" that doesn't show different error for different pins. Rare? More like a Unicorn. I wanted to measure more than one position the chuck, because by adding in differently-sized pins and taking an average, we'd better approximate a fair measurement for what constitutes a 'quality' chuck.
Note that earlier I was sort of compressing both of these two ideas together, because it's convenient that a larger diameter pin will also, incidentally, have a lower percentage of its total error coming from surface area deviation, even though, like you said, those amounts are negligible anyhow. Altogether, the entire point was about chasing perfection. I know it's silly.
As an aside, in wood-work, "runout" is when a grain pattern moves out beyond one edge and onto the face, where it sometimes splinters away. Ideally, a board's grain is supposed to be straight and parallel. Ideally, a piece of wood has perfect end grain that _stays_ on the end--but, well, horseshoes and hand-grenades!
Thanks for the comment! I had the exact same thought as you and in my last chuck comparison video I measured as close to the chuck jaws as I could for that reason.
But for this test I wanted to follow Jacobs' official, internal testing methodology, so I contacted them when I bought the chuck and they sent me an email with their testing procedures. Their tolerances are based on testing a pin that's half the capacity of the chuck (a 1/2 " max capacity chuck would test on a 1/4" pin), and they take their measurement 1" to 1.5" from the jaws. They also take three measurements as I did, rotating the pin 120 degrees between each one.
I do think that using a thicker gauge pin would be interesting too, and now I'm curious enough I'm going to test a couple of them on a 1/2 inch pin for their max capacity to see if there is any real difference.
Thanks again for the comment, I appreciate the feedback and your thoughts!
@@ShopHumor If you did that 120° rotation thing, that would cover lots of pin error. That's a pretty elegant solution. I must've missed the part about taking three measurements. There sure are lots of ways to aim for 'perfect'! Like I said, just thinking out loud.
@@pocket83squared I really appreciate your thinking out loud. Feedback helps a lot!
Outside of the home-shop, in an industrial setting, i have found that the more people that use a tool over the years, the more wear and tear and abuse it gets. If i am the only one using a Jacobs chuck, it lasts forever !
It all comes down to how much do you want to spend ? And how many users and abusers are gonna have access to it.
In the 1970s you couldn't find much hardware in the U.S. manufactured in the PRC. And the first stuff I did see by way of tools were garden implements and sheet metal shears that appeared to have been made by hand in a smithshop. I went overseas and happened to pick up a set of open end wrenches made in Shanghai. The metal quality was good enough and the cross-section so slim that I could use them as bicycle cone wrenches. At this time tools from Taiwan were not worth buying. A wrench would practically deform around a bolt under high torque.
With properly trained work force, attention to quality and standards and safety practices, good products can be turned out almost anywhere.
But quality requires standards and measurement.
Somebody has to give a damn.
I recently retired from a large US manufacturer. They were constantly struggling to get decent employees. Despite being well paid union employees the company struggled with 20% absenteeism. 1/3 of new employees failed the drug test. After advocating for US manufacturing for 40 years I've given up on the US workforce.
American culture has changed
Current and recent generations are largely mentally ill.😮
While you were advocating for at-home manufacturing all the kids that are filing into these companies were being educated by literal communists to hate your country and productive work in general. Sucks, huh?
This issue isn't just in manufacturing, it's everywhere. Entitlement with the past two generations as ruined the workforce. Everyone wants to make the most money for doing the least amount of work. Also, most don't want to do trade or factory jobs anymore. It's too hard for these snowflakes. Thus, construction and trade jobs are filled with immigrants who are grateful for the jobs unlike the young, lazy Americans still living at home with Mom and Dad in their late 20's.
That's your ignorance, blame yourself it was probably your company was the problem.
The old Jacobs chuck appears to have a wonky body. I'm betting that if you measure runout at the nose it will be almost as bad as at the end of the gauge pin
It makes you wonder about the arbor taper pocket's concentricity (or the possibility of burs in it)
Dake makes nice manual arbor presses.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Great review. Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome. Thanks for taking the time to comment. :)
Dake makes nice arbor presses.
Jacobs 18Ns from the 50's run about the same. Runout on the 3 in my shop is at the .0015 to .002 inch range. Plenty good enough to drill holes where they need to be.
Rohm makes good key type drill chucks, not ball bearing but smooth and accurate, reasonable price.
Thanks!
Thank YOU! I appreciate it very much.
As per usual a 10 minute video & 1 hour of reading the comments. And I just subscribed to your channel. Thank you Sir
Thank you for subscribing and taking the time to comment. I appreciate it!
Modern manufactures world wide are capable of producing quality products... you pay for quality, little for junk.
That's been my experience as well, with the caveats:
* Contract BOM must be clearly spelled out with no substitutions allowed outside of the approved second-source parts list.
* Contract tolerances/specifications must be clearly spelled out, preferably with slightly tighter tolerances than you really want in the final products.
* Contract calls out regular audits by home-office quality and design engineers.
If you give them ANY leeway, they WILL use cheaper parts and machining tools while NOT passing along the savings to you.
Usually you get what you pay for, sometimes you find a diamond in the rough but not normally.
Sometimes you pay little for quality as well - look at project farm videos where many products outperform super expensive stuff or difference is tiny for 5x price increase.
Great job. Thank you 😊
The body of the 11N has clearly been bent somehow. The wobble where the chuck key inserts is visible
For some reason, many people are under impression that China means low quality. Shops in China will manufacture the parts to your order, just like in any other country. If your order spec says "cheap" for tolerance requirements, it's no wonder the parts are not spectacular. However, if your spec says 1 µm accuracy, that's what you get.
👍
We don't like slave labor, no matter what the quality is.
@SierraDaylight You use it in your prison system. Like the US most Chinese (now) have a high standard of living.
@@SierraDaylight Yes we do. Most US states are more than happy to use slave labor, even in life and death situations such as fire fighting.
The problem with china quality is the amount of fakes and how they will restructure an entire manufacturing process the second your personal inspectors leave the door.
Great comparison, worthy of PF
Would have liked to have seen hardness comparisons of them, see if they've improved or strayed from hardening specs
Are the jaws ground in position so need to by in specific slots like a metal lathe ?
Machining, as a hobby, is an expensive proposition. 🤷♂️ If it weren’t for graces of companies LIKE HHIP, and Vevor, making really over specced tools for the price point, I certainly could not afford to machine as a hobby. The same goes with quality jewelers tools.
Certainly the quality varies from brand to brand…but everything comes from the same molds…it boils down to fit and finish.
I bought a $700 Vevor lathe. Disassembled it. Upgraded anything that I thought would improve rigidity and make it more robust, like new Chuck, new Tool rest, new live center, and gibs, and after a fun year of fiddling with my “lathe kit” and another $700, I dare say that I have a machine that probably turns as well as a similar specced $3000 machine, out of the box.
Think of these budget machines as “Kits” …take them apart and DO the finish work….hone the ways and gibs, replace any flimsy parts and work on overall rigidity of the machine …for $700, out of the box…you get a $700 machine. But its a great starting point toward building a machine that functions as well as a machine that cost twice your total investment.
I’ll end, with this….and i;m in no way sponsored…but I’m absolutely blown away, by the quality of some of Vevors rotary mill tables and milling/drill press tilt tables. I recently bought a Vevor 8” HV8 rotary table, on Amazon….and I got this 50lb, beautifully machined table out of the box and was in shock, at the quality. 🤯🤯🤯. I thought…”how can you even BUILD this thing, for $175 bucks….let alone SHIP it to me”
That's awesome. I completely agree with your sentiment. I appreciate value wherever I can get it, and when companies sell high quality tools for prices I can afford, I jump on them. I'm going to have to take a look at that HV8 rotary table. Also, your lathe sounds great. I've got a smallish Grizzly lathe that I picked up used and have been making some similar modifications / improvements to, along with a few repairs (the timing belt pulley needed repair, for example). Love having a lathe in the shop though.
@ yeah mines a little one too…Vevor 7x16….it’s very basic manual. I still plan to add a DRO, because theres uncorrectable slop in some of the dials…or correctable, but recurring slop…that to get any real precision, i think a digital readout and good scales, would do it.
If you have a small mill, like the little grizzlys, or Klutch, or Seig (they all make mostly identical X2D models)
Anyway….if you have a small benchtop mill….get the 6” vevor rotary table…i think its HV6. The 8” is a little big, if you want to mount both, it and a regular 3” mill vise. ….also, with the 8”. You might have some quill height problems with taller parts. As much as it pained me, I exchanged the 8 for a 6, which because of popular demand, was $20 more. Still WELL worth it.
Thank for all your great videos…i’m a devout follower, now 👍
Nah, just go to auctions - Vevor is not needed at all. I got few things from there and I got what I paid for - fortunately I could machine them.
milling/drill press tilt tables out of the box was total garbage - even fixing it was a total pain in the rear end - but it was cheap. Main issue is that machining the round parts is more or less super difficult.
Greenerd arbor presses are great. They have the push force centered on the ram. Square ram presses have the force located under the rack, or the front edge of the ram. This is why they crook broaches when people try to use them for that. ----Doozer
WD is not a lubricant but Water Displacement agent.
Pretty sure they're mostly just made in bulk by the same factory then tested for accuracy. The more accurate ones sell for a higher price and bought by higher end brands while the less accurate ones sell for a lower price and are bought by the cheaper brands.
I doubt many brands actually have their own factories just for them any more
I have a Dake 1-1/2B. Not cheap, but you get what you pay for. Adjustable gibs for ram alignment, 3 ton capacity.
If you are willing to pay for it, Dake is the standard in my mind for arbor presses. There are other very acceptable brands. I would advise away from any Asian import regardless of the brand name. I currently own 2 Dake press variants. They are odd styles/sizes, so they get little use. I sold a Famco when I upgraded to a Famco 3R. 3R Famco increased tonnage, stroke length, and added the ratcheting drive feature. Famco no longer manufactures. They aren't quite as refined as the Dake, but are priced accordingly, so Famco can be an excellent budget option. If I find a Dake 1x2 1/2, the Famco will get a big brother or will get sold. This Dake is nicely sized for hand pressing. It has excellent stroke, ratcheting features, adjustable ram brake/clamp, AND dual tonnage functions. I don't recall the actual ratings, but I think that I remember that they exceed the 3 ton of my 3R.
Gernerd makes an impressive arbor press. Palmgren used to make budget friendly crude industrial quality products. I own several vintage USA made drill press vises of various sizes and styles. All are very well made and very functional. I purchased a modern Palmgren cross vise in unused condition for $20. I thought that one of my sons or grandsons might employ it in their drill press only shops. I gave it a major work over (similar to your efforts on the chucks in this video). When I got done, it is probably worth the $20 that I paid, but I can't get any of my boys to accept it as a gift! That is currently at least 15 potential owners. It is crudely scaled in mm. I purchased a Modern Palmgren variable speed 6" bench grinder that us okay, and have seen tempting prices on the Orient sourced vises and arbor presses. They all look like disappointing low quality import rebrand junk. China can do well, but Palmgren took a quantum leap dowward when that iconic brand name went overseas.
I like presses. I own 5 arbor and H frame machines up to 50 ton electric/hydraulic press. It is crude by hydraulic press standards. It started its life as a Princess Auto, but has enjoyed some aftermarket upgrades. I bought it for the features and tonnage capacity and was tempted by the $150 (bad hydraulic pump) cost. It turned out that an industrial shop maintenance hack had replaced the 3HP motor with a FHP pulley and belt and the belt was slipping on the oversized pump pulley. The proper belt and pulley cost me less than the replacement hydraulic oil. The H frame press steel looks sketchy for a 50T machine, but shows no signs of damage. I bowed 1.5" thick steel press plates .5" without it straining. I was not watching the work while looking at the pressure gauge and pump on my initial inspection. This led to discovering the slipping FHP belt. I understand that Princess Auto is the Harbor Freight of Canada. They have/ had in-house manufacturing. My machine model is now obsolete, but their current model "equivalents" are $2500-$3000.
Stay away from the modern import arbor presses. You can get industrial quality vintage USA machines for the same and lower cost. Dake, Famco and Gernerd are the brands that I am familiar with. I have used many Dake and several Famco machines and owned/own both brands.
Thank you for the Jacobs China chuck evaluation. I have been afraid to make that purchase plunge.
Shars sells some impressive budget friendly options. I am starting to consider them for hobby shop budget upgrades/additions. I am pretty stocked up on shop capacity with iconic industrial brands largely sourced on the used market.
When you purchase your arbor press, include a heavy bolt to the floor stand with work pass through features. My shop built stand includes 1" steel frame components. Without a substantial bolted to the floor stand, I couldn't get the full advantage of my 3T press.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've had a couple recommend Dake. They look pricey, but very good. I'll look out for those Famco and Greenerds as well. I really appreciate the thoughtful and detailed comment. Thank you!
Can you do this with old vs new SPI? I have three sizes of newer SPIs if you can find an old one.
Ahhh, the good old asian goo grease, otherwise known as "yak fat grease". Look it up. It was a 'thing'. ;)
Your review was... very impressive! I'm sure it's TTC & PF approved.
BTW - you've now guilted me into going out to the shop and stripping down all my chucks for a cleaning. Yeah... thanks.... :D
Haha, you're welcome, lol. Hope you don't end up making one worse like I did!
Any country capable of putting a rover on the moon can produce quality products. The ones to blame for poor quality are the companies who knowingly request a manufacturing specification to maximize profit instead of final product quality. Just watch some videos on the topic of initial quality of Tesla cars coming out of their Chinese factory compared to the same ones built here and in Germany. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Great video! You can get good stuff from China, I guess it costs more to make them care about a product. I've taken up some machinist roles where I work, our equipment is below quality to be truthful, but I enjoy doing it. I learned a lot from someone else I worked with and I finally get to try things out.
I enjoy it too, even just from a hobby / garage workshop perspective.
I'm liking your channel. 👍👍
Thank you!!
Digging your videos! Btw, you can flip the tips on your dial indicator to more easily read a round pin like that than using the pointed tip. They just unscrew. Though doesn't look like it was that hard to line up :)
Thank you! Good tip. I usually just leave them but you're right it's pretty easy to swap!
Greenerd 6A armor press with captains wheel!
Nothing like doing all the work to find out you only made it worse 😂
That's the story of MY life.
@@paulsto6516 50/50 for me.
Lmao right? Damn it
Thanks for an excellent comparison and breakdown into parts. I am very surprise they are full of grease
Huh, it's amazing how much money you can save on a part when you just remove the ball bearings lol.
China produces some of the best tools and tooling in the world, but the old adage holds true. You get what you pay for, and quality is never cheap.
Lol. No.
+100 social credit points, just ten million more and you'll be allowed to take one fifteen minute break per working day.
@@Bobo-ox7fj +1000 if someone becomes a ytube shill for vevor.
Palmgren makes a great arbor press.
Thank you for the recommendation!
They used to make a decent arbor press. They are now all made in China, as of around 2010, and simply assembled in the USA. Their vises are now made in Taiwan and assembled here. So yeah, if you can find a filthy old gem at auction and clean it up, you'd probably have a nice press.
What machine are you testing on?
That's a PM-25 Milling Machine that I converted to run on an Acorn CNC board a while back.
@@ShopHumor What's the spindle runout look like without a tool in it?
I work in the automotive manufacturing. Some of our German cars production has been moved to China. It was a big concern of course. But it took very little effort and time to have a perfect quality production. For comparison, it took almost 2 years to have the US factory do just a decent job. Even more surprising: the made in China cars show the best alignment and quality we have ever seen. Better than made in Germany, better than made in the US.
They CAN do great quality. It is a matter of costs, requested specifications and finding the right partners.
Yep, and finding quality in the US is a tough ask. The Chinese have excelled at manufacturing technologies. They are so far ahead on solar cell and battery manufacturing techniques that it's questionable whether other countries have any chance of catching up without a complete shift in the technology itself that requires a complete manufacturing reinvention. Yes, they make and sell cheap crap. But if you pay peanuts, then only monkeys will take the work. What on earth do stupid Americans expect? And they rag on "import quality". Did you notice that Vertex chuck? Taiwanese. And half the price of the Jacobs. The Taiwanese are even better than the Chinese at manufacturing - they taught the Chinese how to do it, after all. Compare a Vertex milling vise to the very average Kurt ones they make in the US.
My experience as well, it has to do with quality control and being realistic as to true costs.
about a decade ago, one of the car teardown pundits said "We used to laugh at Chinese vehicles, but now they're world class and in a decade they'll be world-beating"
He was right
Don't blame China based manufacturing for low quality products. Put the blame squarely on the company ordering the product and the price point they want to pay for the manufacturing. As shown in this video, if you are willing to pay for quality they will meet your expectations. Too bad that's not the formula for getting rich.
You have never worked for automotive manufacturing if that's the conclusion you have come to. Nice try kid.
1:04 that actually reads "Jaco BS", not "Jacobs"...
jacobs used to produce till about a decade ago in the usa supposedly they moved production, though if you need a usa made chuck find a good machine shop they still exist and certainly could thread up something, but it comes at a cost, I know not of more hand drill chuck maker here in the usa, there are tool and work holding makers here though
The state of things now is sad... I needed a vise and a "Record" vise will now set you back a couple hundred for a piece of scrap made overseas out of melted down tuna cans!! A quick search on Marketplace turned up a local guy selling an old one for 50$!! When I gat there he also said for a couple bucks extra he had a small 3" vise he could throw in as well... I snagged up both!!
What is poorly done about the etching? Looked fine.
Ignoring where it said "Jac obs" and the 'o' was rubbing off... guess it's fine. ;)
The letter spacing was really wonky. Big gaps between some letters, not others. The Jacobs logo, for example, had a giant space in it that isn't supposed to be there.
Yes - weird spacing and "artifacts" from the process.
Looked cheap and was cheap
The Chinese can do high-quality stuff. It’s just that their US clients don’t usually specify high-quality, hence their so-so quality…
Highly underrated channel.
Greetings from Paris 🇫🇷
Best chuck I've seen was a vertex 1/2".
Same here. Best one I've tested.
The reality about "made in China" is that they can do pretty much any level of quality any other country can do BUT if you leave the Chinese to their own devices, they will cut any and every corner to improve their profits. You have to be ultra-specific and check absolutely everything they deliver. 99% of the time, when something made in China is crappy, it's because it was meant to be crappy. Because the US business that outsourced to China did so specifically to save money, and there's actually no magic trick to saving money: you have to reduce quality. The Chinese will happily make a shit product for you if that's what you require. Just don't necessarily blame it on them.
When Wall Street buys an iconic American brand the first thing they do is cut the quality So the investment fund manager can get his monthly bonus check.
I’ve never even considered this
I like it.
@Ave come check this guy out!
That one from China is a Jaco bs.
Yeah whats up with the logo?
Just makes it seem cheap.
Went from good to trash.
Cmon, even 10 thousandths is ONE one hundredth of an inch off. You're drilling holes in wood. Who cares about 1 one hundredth off.
At some point, precision moves into the theoretical. It's sort of a game that people play to challenge themselves. Human have been doing this from the beginning--for many hundreds of thousands of years--which is why there have been found ceremonial hand-axes that would've been too big to be useful, and others that were highly polished for no apparent purpose.
Don't you ever push your limit at _something?_
That's a milling machine converted to CNC, and I use it for aluminum, brass, and steel. But generally I agree with you that drilling is not a precision operation. I use my end mills and reamers to achieve the final dimension. Thanks for watching.
In case you are not aware you can use these chucks to drill metal, and 10 thousand is terrible and you will never get a decent hole wood or metal.
Weird. No, not any more. I just want to coast at this point. @@pocket83squared
Obviously you don’t do any type of precision machine tool work. 10/1000 of an inch of total indicated runout is a lot when it comes to machining metal.
It probably doesnt amount to mucj, but you are getting some cosine error since the drop indicator wasnt perfectly perpendicular to the pin in these tests, nor was it in the same exact orientation for each test. Of course that would be very hard to achieve without a decocicated fixture, plus as I said it likely didnt matter much. But it msy explain why the one chuck seemed more out of tolerance after servicing.
You've been watching some machining videos but watching a video doesn't equate to knowing anything about the subject. That indicator varies by what? +/-10 degrees? How much cosine error is that? cos15 = 0.96 so +/-4%. The indicator has that much backlash (do you know what indicator backlash is?).
@@HairyNumbNuts No need to get mean about it. Everything about this test goes beyond the limits of practical application. Perfection is theoretical, and that means it becomes prudent to strictly adhere to procedure, where error minimization becomes part of the game.
Where do you draw the line at just what constitutes "knowing anything"? There have been entire books written on the subject, and, spoiler alert, it's not always practical application (do you know what epistemology is?).
Yeah absolutely. There certainly will be cosine error and hell even cranking the chuck down at different amounts of torque between pin rotations may introduce some small variance. If I had more space, time, and money, I'd love to make dedicated fixtures for that type of testing to eliminate all variables.
Very few pp got super expensive chuck in 1950s and did not use it a lot - especially in the industry so getting runout of 10 thou is nothing special - its worn out.
I got few chucks from Amazon for $10 each and have sub 1 thou runout. It just does not pay to buy Jacobs original stuff when "other" China can make it for 10x or more less... Even if it were to last 3x less... still not worth it.
Weren’t they made in uk for a bit (get it)
Haha, yeah they did have a UK factory. Not sure what years they operated there.
Never go wring with a Dake arbor press...
SC used to be famous for cheap labor. The population then as now were poorly educated, poor for the most part because agrarian economies offered few quality jobs, and that attracted business from more expensive states. The clothing industry tended to move South from the Northeast (the ruins of Patterson and other mills still exist in the NE) until even poorer agrarian areas overseas chose to compete for the same reasons. The golden age of US machinery faded in the 1970s though amazingly Wells-Index still make new knee mills (much nicer than Bridgeport one of which I own and like) and Monarch still make lathes.
The old one was indeed a Jacobs chuck, but if you look carefully at the logo you will see that the new one is just some Jaco BS.
lmao
Whatever you say or think i don’t care about anything from China, i just don’t want any !
I absolutely can't stand the new chi-chucks. I buy USA files and chucks on ebay and flea markets. The imports are garbage. I have a 60 year old pair of diagonal cutter pliers. They're as good as brabd new. I cut springs and piano wire with them. No chips no mushrooming. My snap on pliers chipped in the first 24 hours that I had them. Junk.
High Quality tooling has not come from USA, for a very long time. Quality tooling mostly comes from Europe, Taiwan and now China, at less than half the cost. GOOD LUCK TRUMPER 😂🇨🇦