Almost everybody will be familiar with the drill chuck as it is used on all hand drills and most pillar drills. The chuck itself is a specialized three jaw chuck designed specifically to hold drill bits or other, similar, rotary tools.

Drill chucks come in two main varieties, keyed and keyless. Keyed drill chucks were very common on hand drills until a few years ago and required a key to tighten the chuck around the bit. Keyless chucks, in contrast, require only hand tightening so are generally significantly quicker when it comes time to change bits. Depending on the resistance of the material being drilled keyless chucks can be a mixed blessing. Tightening them by hand sufficiently to ensure the bit doesn't stop and the chuck rotate can be difficult. For this reason many large drills still use keyed drill chucks.

Drill chucks grip bits by compressing three jaws around the item to be held. The jaws move inside a tapered outer body via a thread. As the out body is turned the jaws move up and down inside and, thus, open and close. Drill chucks in hand drills commonly grip bits ranging in size from two millimetres up to around thirteen millimetres which is generally enough for light to medium use. Large powered hand drills and fixed drills can often be fitted with a larger chuck that can accept bits up to twenty five millimetres. Precision drills occasionally have miniature drill chucks that can hold bits as small as half a millimetre.