A few months ago I had problems with two Nova/Teknatool inserts, purchased directly from Nova. I have noticed a decrease in quality of a few of the Nova inserts. One I even put back in the box and wrote "bad", intending to return it for a replacement.
I read somewhere that Teknatool was having some components made in China, maybe that's related.
Someone else posted about their Nova chucks were not running true. Until recently I had never experienced that as long as I took a few minutes to deburr the insert and chuck threads.
Then I bought two inserts for new chucks that caused what I considered unacceptable wobble. By careful measurements on the surface plate in my little machine shop I traced this to what I considered poor machining of the insert - the plane of the bottom was not perfectly parallel to the plane at the top. I wrote about this in another thread. I devised a way to true up the bottom and the two chucks ran true, the same as my other chucks, within .0005" as measured on the outer diameter of the chuck near the front. (I wrote about this too but I don't remember if I provided photos and good instruction.) Holding a piece of ground, hardened drill rod in the chuck showed no wobble.
I've trued up two recent inserts that way. It does take a few minutes but it's not enough of a problem to make me switch to another chuck brand. Fortunatly I probably have a lifetime supply of Nova chucks, even after giving some away recently.
JKJ
