I don't know about your mill, but on the bridgeport clones, The pin can
be replaced without disassembling the spindle. Its been a while but I
seem to recall an access screw was removed to get at the pin, the
spindle had to be indexed to get at the pin, and there was a lock screw
as well.

Charles A. Sherwood wrote:
So after all these comments:
Keep it if you have it, don't worry if you don't?


Seem to me that everything will work just fine without it.
But you might find it annoying to change tooling because
you might need another hand to hold the collet from turning.
I will just have to try my "new" machine without the pin
for a while and see if it annoys me. If it does, add the pin,
but frankly it would have to annoy me a lot to pull the spindle
to replace the pin.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments!
chuck

--
James P Crombie
Slemon Park, PEI
Canada
Machinist - 3D Cad Design - Amateur Astronomer

http://www.jamescrombie.com