I had a mishap on my lathe and popped a fuse that I am currently waiting for.

My nephew needed a hole drilled and tapped in the center of part of his 4 wheeler axle. With the lathe down I had to do it on the mill. I popped the 6" three jaw and adapter plate off my rotary table and put that on my mill.



I put a 3/4" dowel into my spindle in a collet and aligned the chuck to the spindle by closing the 3 jaw on the dowel and toe clamped the plate to the table. I could have finished with dialing it in but the dowel got it plenty accurate with very little trouble.

The hardest part was making sure the part wasn't sitting in the chuck crooked. I turned the part as I did the final tightening and it went in very straight.

I don't know why I didn't think about this long ago. It made the whole process a breeze. I think I am going to buy an 8" chuck and mount it on a 1" thick square plate just for these kinds of jobs.

Anyone else do this?

Yes, I have a beater 3 jaw for just such an occasion.

Yup, a friend showed me this years ago and thought it was brilliant.

Just an old three jaw over the edge works great for longer work .

Very cool. My idea is to mount an 8" to a 1" thick cast aluminum plate drilled with t slot holes on each corner. I could easily do what you did there. I will remember to bore the center to allow through parts. Nothing saying I might someday want to set up the chuck and plate on blocks.

Pretty good idea.

I have the plate to do that just need to get my bandsaw going . Never ending projects ....

Priceless

A baseplate with riser threaded 2.187-10 to accept Hardinge screw on lathe chucks has been part of my basic kit since 1989.

A few times I have needed to mount up my large A2-6 backed chuck when I needed the much larger through hole.

I plan to make another in IIRC 1.75-8 to accept chucks from my Grizzly G0602. This will allow me to double up some jobs on the CNC mills.

Been doing that for decades...
Standard machinist stuff.

I ordered a Shars 8" scroll 3 jaw and a 1" thick cast aluminum plate. I'll have to see if my buddies miter saw can cut 8.375" wide because my little bandsaw cannot. Lol.

I'm just going to bolt it to the plate with close fitting through holes. No reason to locate it accurately on the plate. The holes for the T slots will be plenty generous. Can't wait to try it!

It came out great. My biggest drill is only 1 1/8" so I had to bore the center hole with my boring head from 1 1/8" to 1.575" to match the chuck bore diameter.  I sure wished I had a 2" annular cutter to speed up that job. Put that on the very long list.

I made the slots generous so it would be easy to line up with the chuck via a 3/4" dowel in my spindle. If the part is critical I'll dial the part in after I chuck it up.

I'm pretty stoked with how it came out. I'm hoping my rotary table project goes well this weekend if I get the box in time.

You didn't want the chuck offset so you can hold long stock thru the chuck ? I plan to have six holes in the plate so it can be bolted either way center of the table or off the edge for long material .

I can swing it out off the table using the slots and a couple toe clamps if I want to. It's not hard to add holes later if I decide I want to.

I'm glad I went with a 1" plate.

I have an extra three jaw chuck with soft jaws I use all the time on the mill. It's an A2-6 mount so you can just put two bolts directly into the t slots.