hey don, that sounds like a great idea. i probably have a 4-jaw chuck
afterall, but it's not going to be an emco and will probably need a similar
modification to mount it.

appreciate it! ...though i will have to find somebody who has a dividing
head. i know that i don't have one.

taig accessories are available here. 'lee valley' deals them out of canada.

Hmm ... you could consider doing what I did at first for my
Compact-5/CNC -- I modified a Taig 4-jaw. Remove the jaws, clamp it
reversed in the 3-jaw (with reversed jaws), and turn a recess in the
back 40.00mm diameter by about 4mm deep. While you're set up, bore out
the threads which mount it on the Taig spindle.

Then, drill and counterbore four holes between the jaws for the
mounting screws. What I did was to mount a dividing head on the drill
press, on an X-Y table. (A mill would be nicer, but I didn't have one a
the time.) Carefully position it so the 3-jaw chuck held in the
dividing head's jaws centers one of the mounting holes under the drill
spindle. Then remove the 3-jaw, and replace it with the 4-jaw, and
drill the first hole. Then use the dividing head to rotate it 90
degrees, and drill the second, proceed similarly for the third and forth
holes, then you can remove it from the drill press, and use a piloted
counterbore to make the recesses to accept the screw heads. You may
have to buy some more metric screws of an appropriate length for mounting
the chuck. I've found that when buying more than four screws, I usually
do better to buy a box of a hundred from MSC, instead of paying the
hardware store prices for individual screw -- especially at Home Depot. :-)

There are other ways to transfer the radius of the mounting
screw holes from the existing chuck to the new one, but they are made
more complex by the need to produce a pattern of four holes, instead of
the three used to mount the 3-jaw chuck.

If you don't have a dividing head, perhaps you have a friend who
does, who could help in the drilling of the chuck body for the mounting
screws.

I still have (and occasionally use) that modified 4-jaw from the
Taig (and I bought a new replacement for the Taig for a *lot* less than
the cost of an Emco 4-jaw. I now have the Emco one, but it took several
years of watching eBay, and it still was not that inexpensive.

i've tried ebay for about a month now and have come very close to finding a
few great deals, but all sellers are from the states, making s&h and
customs
adding about 20-25% increase in price, thus eliminating the deal. any
canadian sellers would be awesome.

Is there a Taig dealer near you in Canada? Or for that matter,
what is the customs situation for things shipped from the UK? There,
the Taig is known at the Peatol, and I suspect that the prices are
similarly attractive.

Good Luck,
DoN.
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