I have a small 10" lathe, a Precision Matthews PM1022. I've converted it to CNC but that's not relevant for this post. It has an MT4 spindle taper which is relevant. Rather than try to graft a 5C collet chuck I decided to use an ER32 chuck. They make MT4 to ER32 adapters which should fit right into the spindle. I ordered one of these from icarbide, an ebay company. It looks just like
this one but has an M12 thread on the back rather than an M16. The thread doesn't matter to me as I need to make the draw-bar. I also ordered, mainly for the mill, square and hex ER32 chucks. I figured if I'm getting the ER32 collets I might as well use them both places. Here is info on
the square one. I have not tried any of these for real, or QCed them. They are from China but look nice from the outside.
I ordered these from icarbide the first week of January. The shipping was a disaster. I don't know if this is just me but I suspect their shipping department needs an overhaul. The parts started arriving the end of January, and shipping was from Irvine, CA to Arizona. Long story short, after the dust cleared, I ended up with the parts I ordered plus an extra MT4 to ER32 adapter.
Why on earth are you giving us this long winded irrelevant explanation of tooling you haven't even tried, you may ask. Well, let me tell you, I offered to send the second MT4 to ER32 adapter back to icarbide. Now can you see where this is going? icarbide just emailed me and said "nah, you can keep it". The only MT4 socket I have is on my 10" lathe so I don't need a second adapter.
Do you perhaps have a small lathe with an MT4 spindle? Or otherwise have use for an MT4 to ER32 adapter? If you do I will be glad to post it to you for postage, $9 in the US. These are currently on sale for $30 so shipping outside the US makes no sense. But if you are in the US and can use this let me know.
Now aren't you glad you read the whole thing? :-)
Thanks.