some light comedy - "dog's breakfast" mag chuck

mjautek

Member
Here's a funny -

I've got this round mag chuck I bought years ago, and I'm finally going to make a backplate for it to use it for something (the idea is to use it to make tapered gibs to restore my lathe...). It was kind of stiff so I thought I'd pull it apart to grease it or something. Boy was I in for a surprise -

despite being pretty respectable looking on the outside, it's gotta be the most disgusting machine tool thing I've ever seen. the magnet and the body were rounded by drilling holes and breaking the material, stuff is mig welded together, the machining is horrific and to top it off - the body and magnet slide aren't square at all and so the non-parallel gap between the two is taken up with some snapped off sawzall blades.


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View with baseplate removed


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Closeup of the sawblades...

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magnets. think they were salvaged from a different mag chuck?

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Detail of work done to make the magnet plate round ish


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this is the eccentric guy that provides the movement of the magnet plate is just a piece of hot rolled vaguely cut into a square


Anyways, thought some of you would get a kick out of this.

I wonder if it was made in a factory - the top surface has like the different width rectangles and I don't know how you could make that with an angle grinder or drill press, so maybe it was in fact made in a factory?? who knows...

I thought about cleaning up some of the machining and then thought I could spend an entire day cleaning this thing up and it would work the exact same, so why bother? So I slapped it back together (with some fresh grease) and I will pretend I don't know what's inside har har.
 

Mcgyver

Ultra Member
Can't believe that was commercially made, wow, unbelievable! I know with commercial mag chucks you're never supposed to take them apart as they will lose most of their magnetism, hope that's not the case with this one??
 

mjautek

Member
Can't believe that was commercially made, wow, unbelievable! I know with commercial mag chucks you're never supposed to take them apart as they will lose most of their magnetism, hope that's not the case with this one??
oh I didn't know that?? It's not super strong but it seems reasonable - I've never really used it I can't tell if I made it any worse...
 
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