What do you think they would say about you making your own special tooling? I feel the real advantage of manual machines is they can be used to make very high quality special tooling for use on CNC machines to improve productivity and consistency. My boss was really giving me the stink eye last week over me pulling the collet out of the Mazak and reworking the stop assembly. However, when he realized I had solved a problem with chatter he’d had for years he was very impressed.
I have found that the key to getting a stop collet (16C is what we use) to not cause chatter is it has to be well balanced, which means it has to be well made. I find all of my material for these things in the scrap bins; we have one for 300 and another for 400 series stainless steel. 416 SS and 4140 are the main two materials I use, and from what I have seen they make better tooling than can be bought.
Maybe you could get them out in the shop for a demonstration of why ‘tool A’ is better than ‘Tool B’.