Spent $340 on a 3 jaw self centering chuck for my little 7x14 lathe, and it cut my setup time in half
I put it off for almost a year because the chuck cost more than the lathe did. Before that I was swapping jaws on the 4 jaw for every single part and dialing in runout by hand, which ate 20 minutes before I even made a cut. Now I can chuck round stock and go, and the repeat runout is around 2 thousandths, plenty for the bushings and spacers I make. Was that a dumb amount to put into a cheap import machine, or is tooling money always money well spent?