Hi,

I think you are going to find that you will be severely restricted in the amount of room you will have in the Y direction. Your best bet for holding milling cutters will be finger collets (such as these) held in the 2 MT socket with a draw bar. You will probably only want 1/4 and 3/8" on this little machine. For drilling I would try a 1/4" chuck on a 2MT arbor – again it will be difficult to fit the drill and chuck in the space between the job and the spindle nose. This picture demonstrates how much room even a 1/4" chuck and jobber drill takes up:

R8 describes the taper, it's an alternative to Morse tapers in the machine spindle, so not relevant. An ER25 collet chuck would be a good choice with 2MT arbor but the chuck itself will take up much of the available space, hence the recommendation for finger collets which mostly sit within the spindle taper. An ER 16 collet set would take up less room than ER25 and would give you the option to hold drills as well, so might be worth consideration.

HTH,

Rod

It seems some people don't fully understand the word "horizontal".

First decide what cutters you are going to use. If screw shank Clarkson you might find an M2 Posilock or clone collet chuck designed for them. If you are using plain shank (or those with a flat) you can start with a MT2 collet for the appropriate size. These have a a small risk of slipping so take care.

Then you can get a blank MT2 arbor and bore for a cutter and holding screw. These are available ready made too.

You only need to get one or two to start with so very cheap starting point while you find out a bit more. I wouldn't jump into ER collets until you have tried the whole machine a bit to find out how you find yourself using it. A collet chuck will extend the overhand and it is a bit small and weak for too much of that.

If you're tempted to use split morse collets which are pulled in by the drawbar, don't overtighten them or you will have the devil of a job getting them out again. The Myford type are pulled out by the closing nut. If you've got a self ejecting drawbar you might be OK, but otherwise it's hammer on the end of the drawbar.

as other have said, you'll find that there isn't a lot of room to use a horizontal as a pseudo vertical

Here is my four penn'orth, for what its worth.

If space is limited, in either Horizontal or Vertical mode, 2MT Finger Collets will maximise tool/workpiece space.

To release them, you will need to bash the end of the drawbar, once it has been slackened by about half a turn.(Unless you can make up some form of "pusher" for the drawabar, to spare the spindle bearings).

Finger collets for 2MT will go upto about 12mm, but are "one size" only, whether Imperial or Metric. Trying to use for other than the stated size will damage them. An ER collet chuck will take up space, but the collets will accept upto a 1mm variation in size, so can accomodate Metric or Imperial cutters, (or work in the lathe). ER20 goes up to 13mm, ER25 to 16mm, and ER32 (probably too big for your intended use) 20mm.

They may be expensive, but grip well, and run truer than a drill chuck.

Don't use helical endmills in a drill chuck. The Drill Chuck does not have as much grip as a collet (little more than line contact vs all round in a collet), and the helix will be trying to screw the cutter out of the drill chuck. You may get lucky, but one day, the cutter WILL move out, and mess up things!

H T H

Howard