Grizzly collet closer

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dickda1

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About a year ago, doc1955 gave some good advice about the collet closer from Grizzly. As received, the castings were rough, the fit of the outer adaptor ring was too tight on the spindle adaptor and it vibrated.

I sanded the castings smooth, applied some body putty and repainted.

I followed doc1955's advice and deburred the cams and sharp edges on the inner parts of the assembly

Finally, mounted the adaptor assembly on my lathe (12x24) and turned the outer surface and parts of the inner to remove runnout.

Still glad I did not buy a collet chuck. It sticks out too far onto my relatively short lathe bed.

The collet closer is a good copy of the expensive Royal model, but be prepared to do some work to get it in a useful state.

The cams on my closer do not grip the inner tube when the closer is in the closed postion (collet drawn tight). I need to investigate how to adjust these.
 
It took some tinkering around to mine set correctly but once I got it set and after the deburring and buffing the cam smooth it works very nice now. I would do it again in a minute I am very happy with mine. And i like being able to switch from the collet closer to a four or three jaw chuck in a matter of a minute or two. I have had very good luck with the closer running nice and true. The only thing I wish would be that the handle for it would face out toward the operator and not down. I kow I can do a mod to get it that way but I just haven't made time for that yet. I would say it hasn't inconvenienced me enough yet for me to make time to get it done. :big:
 
Finally got my closer adjusted.

I didn't realize that I needed to tighten up the adaptor ring substantially on the collet before pulling the closer handle. I needed to scrap away a bit of the fiberglass pulley cover to allow that. If done, my newly polished cams snug up against the spindle plate and it works fine.

It was not that the manual was written in Chinglish. I can forgive that, after all I got my closer for $500 less than a Royal. But, the manuals for all versions of the Grizzly closers are so brief that it took a lot of trial and error to understand what needed to be done.

Still like the closer, but it reminded me of putting a bicycle together.
 
Twmaster said:
Pictures or it never happened....

;)
I did post pictures awhile back on things that you needed to do to get the closer to work properly.
One you polish the cams and debu everything and adjust it things work as good as ant I've ever used.
I wouldn't be without it. :big:
 
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