Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yes, absolutely.

John

I personally find a fixture plate like this

much more useful on my 4″ rotary table than a chuck. It’s a 6″ diameter slice of aluminium 25mm thick, with a pattern of M6 threaded holes (same size as my T slots). A 10mm hole in the centre gives location for a centre, and I made a few threaded pins, which with standard clamps let me mount all sorts of shapes on the table.

It’s held down by four T nuts in the table slots. If you are careful with the placement of the holes for bolting it down, it will also bolt directly to the mill table if needed.

The only reason for using a chuck on the rotary table would be to allow you to move work from the lathe to the mill without disturbing the concentricity, but that means mounting the lathe chuck on the table, rather than a separate item.

On 6 August 2025 at 17:56 Peter Cook 6 Said:

[…]

The only reason for using a chuck on the rotary table would be to allow you to move work from the lathe to the mill without disturbing the concentricity, but that means mounting the lathe chuck on the table, rather than a separate item.

I beg to differ, slightly
An independent 4-jaw can be useful for holding and positioning small items

… sometimes easier than using clamps.

MichaelG.

On 7 August 2025 at 00:27 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

The big drawback with using a lathe chuck on a rotary-table is the significant loss of headroom.

That’s an “interesting” generalisation, Nigel

Last time I looked, chucks were available in many sizes, as were rotary tables

.. in some use-cases the loss of headroom might be considered trivial

MichaelG.

Must admit that 90% of the time when I’m using a rotary table it will have a 3 jaw on it, mounted with a backplate so the screws are outside the OD of the chuck.

Mostly gets used to hold small diameters <12mm where a fixture plate would not offer much of an advantage.

Yes they can eat into headroom or even table length when being used vertically but you can shop around for short chucks or use finger collets though I have not found the need for a shorter chuck. A collet chuck is another option if not holding large diameters, 3 & 4 hole ones are available to suit your R/T slots

I ctr the rotary table under the mill’s quill and then depending on which one I’m using will either hold a ground rod in a collet an close the chuck onto that then bolt chuck to R/T. The other one I use more often has a spigot on the back of the backplate that locate sinto a recess in teh R/T so only need to clock in the R/T