After seeing several questions about vacuum chuck systems, I decided to post my "Frugal" system. I purchased the Frugal vacuum system at SWAT about 5 years back. It came with a long section of pipe, 2 nuts, sealed bearing, and 3" PVC coupling to make "a vacuum chuck" to use with a regular chuck. That does not give very much versatility and I decided to make my own adapter (actually 2 for Powermatic 3520 and Nova Comet II) and multiple chucks in different sizes and arrangements to fit 1" and 1-1/4" drives.
The photos show the 2 adapters made using a 6" all thread lamp conduit that I filed the thread down enough to mount the bearing between nuts. I drilled a wood block and glued similar to a pen and used a pen mandrel to turn the sleeve to diameter to fit the lathe, and left a shoulder for "O"ring to seal against drive end. You can see a piece of tape on one that was a little loose and required shimming. The nuts were epoxied to conduit. The wood bearing housing was turned to accept the bearing and deep enough for the side vacuum hose connection, again a short section of lamp conduit. I find that threading the hose to the conduit and not just pushing on give an adequate seal and holds up for many applications. Bearings were purchased from Amazon.
The chucks are wood blocks threaded with Bealle threader for 1" or 1-1/4" drive. I seal the wood with a couple of applications of thin shellac including the threads which are rerun after second application. The blocks are turned with tenon to fit inside the couplings, or pipe section, and epoxied epoxied. The shoulder should be wide enough to allow grabbing to unscrew from drive and not use the PVC. Additional chucks have been made using only flat plates with foam for little lidded boxes. Photo shows less than half of chucks made.
The last photo shows 33" D platter being held by 7" flat plate with 6" recess to provide 1/2" ridge for seal with foam. The blue tape was to locate the chuck since there was no tailstock to locate center. Vacuum chuck was used to carefully remove 5" tenon and also allow rotating to use airbrush. Use the vacuum carefully and it can be a good friend.
Homemade Vac Adapter.JPGHomemade Vac Chucks.JPGPlatter on Vac Chuck.JPG
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