What is your budget, what mount is it, can you face off a backplate, or does it have to come ready to put on your lathe?

Crumbs! Hard to imagine breaking one. Sounds as if you were unlucky with a manufacturing defect. Any chance of a photo of the dismantled criminal?

My gripe with cheapo 4-jaws is not that they break, it's that their adjustment is 'gritty' rather than smooth. They do the job but take longer to set up.

Dave

Did you try arc eurotrade ? They sell genuine sieg stuff that will fit your lathe and comes from one of the few good factories in china . I suspect you will have to make an adapter for a burnerd to fit a mini lathe .

Edited By XD 351 on 03/11/2017 07:46:37

TOS and Bison are also good quality but they do cost more than budget brands. As usual with budget equipment we rely on the supplier to back the products they sell and to have chosen a manufacturer that makes a reasonable quality at a keen price, if price is too much of a priority then quality will suffer.

Mike

I haven't tried a Zither 4-jaw but their 100mm 3-jaw is exceptionally good for the price.

A good brand if you want a balance of cost and quality (ISO9001).

Neil

Thanks for your kind comments. I would just like to clarify please, which I hope no one will mind…

The Chinese lathe chucks we sell are purchased through SIEG. If we have a problem, we sort it out with SIEG. In turn, they sort it out with the manufacturer. Having said this, there was a batch we had re-called, and this was posted on this forum at the time. Other then that, we get the odd faulty chuck, or a return where the customer is not happy with the chuck, even though the chuck is fine – no better or worse than the average Chinese chuck.

Having said the above, most Chinese chucks are fit for the purpose they are made for, provided they are procured through the right channels. The Zither chucks from India are better than the general Chinese ones, but you will need a plain backplate, to be turned on your mini-lathe for the register, then drilled and tapped by you to make the chuck fit. Again, one has to be careful without making presumptions that all Indian chucks are good. SHARP – Indian chucks from Chronos are also good. In all such cases, a backplate will need to be used.

Ketan at ARC.

I also bought a fuerda 4 jaw self centring chuck last year and very pleased with the quality of it.

Dave

Bison Bail 3704 for 4 jaw SC, or 4306 for 4 jaw independent Both will fit your mini lathe. The 3704 is mounted on an adaptor plate from the rear, and the 4306 mounts from the front on to the adaptor plate.

Hope this helps.