[michael_e]

I've had the hots to make a bit of a different style of internal holder so that I could engrave the sides of rings more easily for quite a while now and this thread gave me a really cool idea of how to make a coin collet as well as an internal collet system at the same time, (using different inserts). Since I like heavy tools I figured that I'd make this mostly from a pre-existing tool that could do double duty. That tool is an ER32 collet and collet holder that's been modified to fit my engravers block by cutting off the spindle end and doing some milling to shorten the whole affair. Fabricating a set of inserts in brass to fit the collet and provide either internal gripping for rings or external gripping for different sized coins would complete the arrangement. The beauty of these collets is that they are heavy, durable and reasonably priced. The inserts will look something like Kurt's collet, but have 8 slots matching the slots on the ER collet and fit closely to both the ER collet I.D. and the coin O.D., tranfering the griping power of the ER collet through the brass insert to the coin. The ER collet system comes with a built in collet removal as the collet is captive in the cap nut and offers a closing range of .04 inches. I think that with the right design on the insert, (not too stiff), that the collet could be closed on the coin by hand and offer a fine, evenly distributed grip on the coin with no chance of marring the coin and offer easy removal since the coin would be slightly loose when initially inserted. I've shown a penny stuffed into the steel collet where the insert would go. I'd start hacking up this collet holder right now, but I use it as is and I don't want to mess it up, so I'll have to get this idea rolling next week when some different parts come rolling in. Thanks for the boost to the idea factory Kurt !


Michael E.