CME 8" 3-Jaw Self-Centering (Scroll) Lathe Chuck, Plain (Flat) Back, Two-Piece Reversible Jaws

It was a far better build than I expected. Like many others, I had to disassemble completely, remove a significant amount of grit and crud from the device, reoil, and assemble it. This will not be utilized on a lathe. I am mounting it to a pallet system for my CNC mill.

I bought this chuck for working with thin-wall cylindrical workpieces hoping the runout would be better than what some reviewers had reported. I received the unit, completely disassembled, de-burred, re-lubricated and re-assembled it, about an hour or two well spent. I left about 0.001 allowance on the backing plate registration boss and indicated the chuck in before tightening the 3 mounting screws. Doing that eliminated about 0.0005 initial runout. In practice runout at 3/8” work diam. is less than 0.001, runout at 3/4” diam. is less than 0.0005 (!), and runout at 1.25” diam. is less than 0.0015. Of course, it depends to a degree on which pinion(s) you use to tighten and how you set the material in the jaws but if I’m willing to spend a couple minutes with an indicator I can get really good results. Overall I’m pleased with this chuck. SAN OU is a large Chinese drill and lathe chuck manufacturer. I have two other chucks made by this company and neither is as good as this one. Due to variability in sample quality I'm sure your mileage could vary from my results.

Seems to be quality built,considering this chuck replaced a 60 year old 3 jaw chuck this is a huge upgrade for my old sears robuck lathe..lol

I honestly was not expecting much out of this chuck. I figured it was just another knock off, inaccurate import, I was very wrong, very precise , works great. I don’t know how I got along without it.

I bought the 6" 6-jaw chuck and a backplate for my South Bend 10L. The backplate threads were a mess but I had a 2 1/4 x 8 tap and cleaned them up. The chuck was full of grinding grit as expected at this price and I took it apart and cleaned it. When mounted on the lathe the lathe body had about 3 thou runout - not great but OK. However I put various size ground bars in it, and all show 11-13 thou runout - so I'm returning it. Disappointed!

Looks like top quality, so tired of my old junk I've been using. Need to fit my backing plate, will up date.

Easy to use and install

When the chuck was fairly new, i was tightening a fitting down and one of the 3 jaws broke, contacted the Co. about the bad casting. they did not help with the problem or replacement of the jaws