Best Hydraulic Chucks

[UtahTechFabLab]

We are the typical job shop, super high mix low volume, machine just about every material you can imagine. So naturally we have just about every type of holder under the sun, with the exception of no shrink fit. Hydraulic chucks we have found great for tight tol finish work, but have had pull out issues when roughing, ER are sufficient for anything semi loose tolerance (+/-.001 or more), Side lock kind of a go to for roughing, however to date the absolute best milling chucks we have come across are the emerge FPC holders. Pricey but not much different than hydraulic prices. Interchangeable collets, no special fixtures for swapping tools or collets out, they have basically zero runout and have never had a tool pull, additionally we get 3-5X tool life over a sidelock or ER collet. The difference it has made on some of our more troublesome jobs has been stellar. If we were not constantly swapping tools and collets i'd probably go shrink fit but for us right now it doesn't make sense. Also emuge support is pretty nice to have for optimization, they know what they are doing over there.

Thank you my friend, that was incredibly helpful! Over the last few days of research and talking with application engineers, I've decided to use milling chucks for all of our roughing (likely the Hi-Power Milling Chuck from Big Daishowa) and hydraulic toolholders for all of our finishing or long-reach applications (likely a few products from ETP).

I had never heard of the FPC product, but I'm going to contact Emuge and see what they offer. It seems like a good alternative to the Diashowa product for roughing operations. My only concern is that it requires tools with a Weldon flat, whereas hydraulic toolholders almost always forbid this. Thus I would need to control which tools go where. When it comes to students using things, the less variation I can have the better. But still, I'll see what Emuge says.

Cheers!

 

[rklopp]

I have one of the Albrecht-branded FPC-type chucks and it grips extremely securely. The problem is that the collet can be extremely difficult to release. I have seen somewhere on PM folks having the same issue, which may be why Albrecht no longer makes them AFAIK. At a minimum, a torque wrench key would be mandatory in a multi-user environment.

 

[Micmac1]

Thank you my friend, that was incredibly helpful! Over the last few days of research and talking with application engineers, I've decided to use milling chucks for all of our roughing (likely the Hi-Power Milling Chuck from Big Daishowa) and hydraulic toolholders for all of our finishing or long-reach applications (likely a few products from ETP).

I had never heard of the FPC product, but I'm going to contact Emuge and see what they offer. It seems like a good alternative to the Diashowa product for roughing operations. My only concern is that it requires tools with a Weldon flat, whereas hydraulic toolholders almost always forbid this. Thus I would need to control which tools go where. When it comes to students using things, the less variation I can have the better. But still, I'll see what Emuge says.

Cheers!

It actually does not require the weldon, the one we use does not, that is an option they offer, however in my experience MOST applications do not require that. I would reccomend these for finish ops as well as the roughing.

 

[Micmac1]

I have one of the Albrecht-branded FPC-type chucks and it grips extremely securely. The problem is that the collet can be extremely difficult to release. I have seen somewhere on PM folks having the same issue, which may be why Albrecht no longer makes them AFAIK. At a minimum, a torque wrench key would be mandatory in a multi-user environment.

Yes, the collets can actually break as they have the hardened worm end of the collet. We have only had 1 get stuck (which broke the collet) to release. Emgue rep came to the shop and picked it up, fixed it and brought us back the chuck with a new collet and endmill the next day. I have since put a very small amount of the grease that comes with indexable screws on ONLY the thread/worm of the collet since then have not had any issues. It helps to not let them sit on a shelf for weeks on end with an endmill installed especially after running them with coolant, that is how the one we had got stuck.

 

[nateacox]

We switched from Schunk to Mari. No regrets, the Mari stuff is great.

 

[UtahTechFabLab]

It actually does not require the weldon, the one we use does not, that is an option they offer, however in my experience MOST applications do not require that. I would reccomend these for finish ops as well as the roughing.

Man thank you! I actually talked to the North American sales lead for Emuge today, he was very helpful. I've asked him to quote a smattering of products for us.

I'm curious about your suggestion to use the Emuge product for finishing too. Have you found that they actually perform better that a good hydraulic chuck for finishing? Or certain kinds of finishing? Everything I've heard is that hydraulic chucks have superior dampening properties, which I feel could be useful -- particularly for long-reach tools.

But I could be wrong! It seems I'm learning new things every day because of this thread and all the phone calls it leads me to.

Thank you!

 

[Micmac1]

Man thank you! I actually talked to the North American sales lead for Emuge today, he was very helpful. I've asked him to quote a smattering of products for us.

I'm curious about your suggestion to use the Emuge product for finishing too. Have you found that they actually perform better that a good hydraulic chuck for finishing? Or certain kinds of finishing? Everything I've heard is that hydraulic chucks have superior dampening properties, which I feel could be useful -- particularly for long-reach tools.

But I could be wrong! It seems I'm learning new things every day because of this thread and all the phone calls it leads me to.

Thank you!

We have found them to be just as good as any hydraulic holder we have for finishing. I actually think they grip the tool much better also. Runout would be comparable to any quality hydraulic holder.

 

[Micmac1]

We switched from Schunk to Mari. No regrets, the Mari stuff is great.

We have a bunch of mari tool holders, the dual contact cat 40 stuff anyway. Just ordered more drill chucks on friday, they make quality tools for sure.

 

[UtahTechFabLab]

Hey Micmac1, I apologize that I never replied to your comment directly, but thank you so much! Emuge actually gave us three FPC chucks and a few collets just because. I haven't done anything crazy with them yet, but I already love them and I'm buying a few more!

I love the opportunity to introduce our would-be engineers to real-world products like this. It's stuff like that (not using cheap-as-possible tooling) that will help them make wise decisions when they step into a real job and have a tricky job to figure out.

Thanks!

 

[ARB]

I also switched from Schunk to Mari. I had a Skunk lose it's ability to hold after about a year. They said tough luck. The Mari holders have been swell.

 

[5 axis Fidia guy]

Regardless who you choose, I will caution you on roughing, especially dynamic type toolpaths that use the side of the endmill. They will pull out every easily compared to even just a regular collet chuck. You can't beat a milling chuck for roughing, and some are quite accurate.

 

[fmari --MariTool-]

Regardless who you choose, I will caution you on roughing, especially dynamic type toolpaths that use the side of the endmill. They will pull out every easily compared to even just a regular collet chuck. You can't beat a milling chuck for roughing, and some are quite accurate.

Milling chucks do have a great reputation for strong grip. But also for longer gage lengths. Unless you have a higher end machine with great drawbar force and a stiff spindle a short side lock will outperform the best of milling chucks.

Yes I know, milling chucks have gotten shorter over the years. This is great. Back in the day you couldn't find a CAT40 milling chuck with a gage length shorter than 3.5 or 3.75".

 

[fmari --MariTool-]

BTW,

We are releasing a new line of hydraulic chuck in the next few weeks. Currently we have HC standard hydraulic chucks (yes I am a marketing genius ), SHC which are Slim nose hydraulics, and soon RHC hydraulic chucks which are for roughing. They have larger nose diameters, even shorter gage lengths, and different bladder shape to give it almost double the grip. Initially we will have BT30-RHC.500-1.9 in standard and dual contact and CAT40-RHC.750-2.0 in standard and dual contact.

 

[Micmac1]

BTW,

We are releasing a new line of hydraulic chuck in the next few weeks. Currently we have HC standard hydraulic chucks (yes I am a marketing genius ), SHC which are Slim nose hydraulics, and soon RHC hydraulic chucks which are for roughing. They have larger nose diameters, even shorter gage lengths, and different bladder shape to give it almost double the grip. Initially we will have BT30-RHC.500-1.9 in standard and dual contact and CAT40-RHC.750-2.0 in standard and dual contact.

Frank, We will be sure to order a couple of the RHC's to try out!

 

[Micmac1]

Hey Micmac1, I apologize that I never replied to your comment directly, but thank you so much! Emuge actually gave us three FPC chucks and a few collets just because. I haven't done anything crazy with them yet, but I already love them and I'm buying a few more!

I love the opportunity to introduce our would-be engineers to real-world products like this. It's stuff like that (not using cheap-as-possible tooling) that will help them make wise decisions when they step into a real job and have a tricky job to figure out.

Thanks!

No Problem, The FPC emuge stuff is our shops favorite for tight tol work, preferred over our hydraulics for the most part. Nice thing about them is they are great general purpose as they work exceedingly well for both rough & finish compared to ER32 and sidelocks.

 

[fmari --MariTool-]

Frank, We will be sure to order a couple of the RHC's to try out!

Not trying to spam but wanted to notify since I was mentioned a few times in this post. Our RHC roughing hydraulic chucks are in stock. Thank you guys for your support. We are excited about these new style chucks and are working on HSK RHC chucks as well in the future.

 

[UtahTechFabLab]

Not trying to spam but wanted to notify since I was mentioned a few times in this post. Our RHC roughing hydraulic chucks are in stock. Thank you guys for your support. We are excited about these new style chucks and are working on HSK RHC chucks as well in the future.

Thanks Frank! I would love to try some in the future!

One day I would love to do a student-research project where we compare different hydraulic chucks intended for roughing (exact same tool, material, cutting conditions, etc.). I would love to publish it as some sort of official research paper. I need a good profilometer first...

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Hopefully when budgets get renewed in the fall, I'll be in the market for a couple of them.

Cheers,
Andrew