End mill holders AKA side locks, not going away any time soon.

Big credit to Seco tools, Niagra cutter and cnctools at instagram for making this video and posting it.

Adam Wojciechowski on Instagram: “Swipe to see each tool holder in action and listen to the sound each tool holder produces while slotting. Make sure you select the…”

I have always been a big fan of short gage length tooling. Personally as a machinist I always chose tooling that were nice and short. Losing a tenth or two in concentricity when using an end mill holder never concerned me or made any issues. Until something else comes out that can be as short as an end mill holder and same price point ( not everyone can spend $300 on a single holder) end mill holders are here to stay. Short gage length end mill holders have proven extremely effective in helping BT30 machines get some really impressive material removal rates.

fmari --MariTool- said:

Big credit to Seco tools, Niagra cutter and cnctools at instagram for making this video and posting it.

Adam Wojciechowski on Instagram: “Swipe to see each tool holder in action and listen ����to the sound each tool holder produces while slotting. Make sure you select the…”

I have always been a big fan of short gage length tooling. Personally as a machinist I always chose tooling that were nice and short. Losing a tenth or two in concentricity when using an end mill holder never concerned me or made any issues. Until something else comes out that can be as short as an end mill holder and same price point ( not everyone can spend $300 on a single holder) end mill holders are here to stay. Short gage length end mill holders have proven extremely effective in helping BT30 machines get some really impressive material removal rates.

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Yep, good end mill holders for most things. Hydraulic or chucks for fussy light duty stuff.

if you mean weldon shank set screw holders they are often favored where you want highest chance tool wont slip far in tool holder. size of weldon flat is close to size of set screw contact width.
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runout effect. i got tens of thousands of recorded run out readings yearly and i record range of runout and look for unusually short tool life issues. sure if you got a 2" dia end mill with 10" length of flute and it has more than .020" runout dia difference it starts to have a effect.
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i have recorded many thousands of times .010" runout dia difference on 1" dia tools with 3" length of cut. seen thousands drill bits over 12" flute length with over 0.100" runout dia difference. sure short carbide drills its best to keep runout down to .005" dia difference. depends on dia size of drill of course
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collet holders especially when collet gets rusty often have just as much runout as set screw holder. got many thousands of recorded readings on collet holders too
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point is i see people complaining about .001 runout. i record about 10,000 tool runout readings per year over that amount and i have never seen a tool life problem unless runout 5 to 10x more than that.. that is tools with less runout do not usually show longer tool life.
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actually there is a theory minor runout actually increases tool life. end mill or drill in a slot or hole thats slightly larger than tool decreases rubbing pressure. long length drill bits often get a bad vibration resonance going cause drilled hole size too close to drill bit size. long length tools make bad reamers
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when you get easily tens of thousands of recorded runout measurements yearly obviously you can quickly get proof on what runout tolerances are needed. any optical tool presetter can in a second show runout thats often 10x more than machinist was expecting. ask a machinist what runout they think a tool has and 99% of the time it measures far more than the runout they thought they had
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and obviously many tools are ground with a runout error. that is a tool might show .010 runout and be replaced with another tool and in same tool holder, runout can be .000 or .020 that is a massive difference. i would never assume tool itself when made has no runout cause i have seen many with a grinding or sharpening error. long drill bits also many have a slight bend or are not perfectly straight seen when different drill gives massively different runout readings in same tool holder

Interesting video. It seems to be a fair comparison at exception the end mill holder (shorter gage length) and the shrink fit (longer gage length). I wonder how they would perform vice versa.

fmari --MariTool- said:

Personally as a machinist I always chose tooling that were nice and short. Losing a tenth or two in concentricity when using an end mill holder never concerned me or made any issues. Until something else comes out that can be as short as an end mill holder and same price point ( not everyone can spend $300 on a single holder) end mill holders are here to stay.

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Y'know.. that's kinda "bedrock", ain't it?

When coming off "single pointing" - literally "single" and potentially in continuous engagement the whole pass, on a lathe and moving over to a mill - even if fly-cutting - one of the things that struck me as a teeny-bopper was that each rotation of that flycutter tip or each PARTIAL rotation of those "many" teeth on the horizontals I spent my first two years on, then same-again endmills.. why.. wudd'n yah know it?

Ever damned ONE of those critters had to make ITS side of what a lathe-hand wudda classed as a sort of "interrupted cut" as it rotated in to take a bite, then haul away wotever it had bitten-off. Traverse, repeat until done.

"Nature of the beast", IOW. Or there would BE NO flutes or teeth. Ground dowel pin makes a s**t-lousy endmill, yah?



Surely... dead-nuts concentricity, near-as-dammit zero TIR for a cutter CAN indeed matter.

But at what cost? And where else but "HSM" is that cost honestly recoverable, "every time"?

Or, as usual: "Only sometimes".

Gauge length on 30 tapers is king. I tripled (yes, tripled) tool life JUST by losing 28 mm in gauge length on the holders. Same tool, same machine, same program, same feeds, same speeds, same everything, but 28 mm shorter (80 to 52).....oh and went from an Albrect UberChuck to an ER32.

Tonytn36 said:

.oh and went from an Albrect UberChuck to an ER32.

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Yea, that Uberchuck loses all points for hanging out so far from the spindle, making it nearly useless.

Do a tap test on all of these setups and rerun in the optimal range...lets see whats best then.

goooose said:

Do a tap test on all of these setups and rerun in the optimal range...lets see whats best then.

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Nobody in real world manufacturing is going to do a tap test or harmonic analysis on every setup. For first all that work goes out the garbage when you throw in another part from a different bar that has a brinell hardness 10% higher or lower.

Tap test doesn't help much when your retention knob breaks because you pushed a tool to hard and gage length was too long.

Tonytn36 has been around the block and then some. Without getting to specific ( he is in an extremly competitive industry) I am proud to say we work together from time to time. He comes to me with specific needs and I help him with solutions. Soft and hard tooling. He has mentioned this on the forum in the past so it is public knowledge. He knows his stuff. He is in charge of several hundred machines that run 24/7. Seconds in cycle time for him are like minutes to most of us. He makes widgets in the millions of qty. So if you dont believe me when I say gage length is king, full stop, then listen to Tonyn36.

Now if you can get a hydraulic or milling chuck in a 1.5" gage length then you throw this conversation out the window. Everything changes.

Even the 'holy grail' Nikken BT30 milling chucks I would only use for finishing because of the 75mm gage length (not my 1st choice). Many moons ago they used to offer it in a 65mm GL for BT30 which was better but then they stopped offering that

fmari --MariTool- said:

Nobody in real world manufacturing is going to do a tap test or harmonic analysis on every setup. For first all that work goes out the garbage when you throw in another part from a different bar that has a brinell hardness 10% higher or lower.

Tap test doesn't help much when your retention knob breaks because you pushed a tool to hard and gage length was too long.

Tonytn36 has been around the block and then some. Without getting to specific ( he is in an extremly competitive industry) I am proud to say we work together from time to time. He comes to me with specific needs and I help him with solutions. Soft and hard tooling. He has mentioned this on the forum in the past so it is public knowledge. He knows his stuff. He is in charge of several hundred machines that run 24/7. Seconds in cycle time for him are like minutes to most of us. He makes widgets in the millions of qty. So if you dont believe me when I say gage length is king, full stop, then listen to Tonyn36.

Now if you can get a hydraulic or milling chuck in a 1.5" gage length then you throw this conversation out the window. Everything changes.

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Well I guess I'm no expert like yourself or Tonytn36 but my research is showing that tap testing IS becoming more prevalent especially in the high production environment. With the difference this stuff can make it is something that cannot be ignored....I can think of a few other technologies that are common in machining today that were scoffed at when first introduced, but that's a conversation for another day.

Sure, its tough to beat a rigid setup. I think anyone who's been in a shop more than a week would know this. Unfortunately, not all setups will allow for a 1.5" gauge length tool holder. This is even more so when you get into the multi axis setups....which are becoming more the norm. Side locks will always have their place, just like every toolbox will always have a hammer but as we improve our cutting technologies there will surly be applications which can be improved with different holders.

I just find it odd that you are showing a test that is obviously pointing out the harmonics of a cut but yet you have no use for a cutting tool technology that is specifically designed to optimize these harmonics.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, check out machinegenomeproject.com or this video below is a quick example...

Gooose,
You make some very valid points. Also you are correct, many times you need to run a long gage length and in that case you really need to watch concentricity, harmonics, grip and do your research which is the best solution.

Impressive video and results...Thank you for sharing!!

I worked for Seco for a little bit, and was there to see that demo run in person.

That machine by the way, was a 50-taper Mazak VMC. If you look really closely when those tools start the cut, you can see the tools deflect to the left, from the radial cutting pressure. This is the typical force/direction for slotting cuts. The fact that you can visibly see the deflection though, which is certainly confirmed by the numbers (slotting @ 60ipm in steel) kind of gives testament to the kind of cuts they're taking in the video.

Why do I bring this up? Try the same test (with the same cutter, same material, same parameters) on a 40-taper Haas, and Frank's point about short gage-length holders will certainly be driven home hard...



What's also cool about the video, is that Seco makes all of those holders, the cutters, pull-studs & collets. So there's no finger-pointing to be done as to "why" one holder performed better than the others. Pretty much 100% unbiased testing & demonstration... By the way, they put that demo together first to educate all of their sales people on toolholding for solid-round tools. It was part of Seco/Niagara's initiative to increase their solid-round tool sales, and so they put the demo together to educate first their staff, then their distributors, then their customers.


What they didn't show in the video however, was the endmill pull-out from each toolholder. You can kind of see that on the last toolholder - but if I remember correctly, the hydraulic toolholders were horrible. Something like 1/4" or more pull-out over 6". It's a wonder the endmills didn't break in that video. So that highlights another point about side-lock holders. When it comes to pull-out prevention, they are still king...

Cutting both wood and aluminum I have to use a lot of extra long series end mills. 70-80% of my jobs one of the tools I am using is a 1/2" ball with 4.5-4.75 sticking out running 24000rpm. On a tool like that would the lower concentricity of a sidelock be more likely to cause problems? I would love to have less guage length for rigidity and the extra Z height. I am not chasing tenths in foundry patterns so that is not an issue.

All that being said no one makes side locks in ISO 30. I would be happy to test some if you want to make them Frank

Pattnmaker said:

All that being said no one makes side locks in ISO 30. I would be happy to test some if you want to make them Frank

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BT3 End Mill Tool Holders - MariTool

In fact, you can buy them right now...

These are the ISO30 holders he sells ISO3 Collet Chuck Tool Holders - Made in USA - MariTool .

My understanding is that while taper is the same there are other differences between the BT and ISO??

Pattnmaker said:

All that being said no one makes side locks in ISO 30. I would be happy to test some if you want to make them Frank

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Ummh. how about asking him for something he dos NOT have?

A run in #9 B&S would be a nice refresh for my elderly warriors. I suspect some of them speak the dialects of ancient Carthage, even Sparta, they are so old.

I appreciate these insights from everyone. Any particular suggestions on grinding flats on endmills? Frank's 1/2" and up endmills have them but smaller not. I would like to get setup a little better with 3/8" endmills but need to grind flats on them. Frank any chance of stocking 3/8" endmills with clamp flats? In the mean time I bought a 1/4" wide diamond wheel that I plan to make an adapter to install it on my hand grinder for this purpose.

Pete Deal said:

I appreciate these insights from everyone. Any particular suggestions on grinding flats on endmills? Frank's 1/2" and up endmills have them but smaller not. I would like to get setup a little better with 3/8" endmills but need to grind flats on them. Frank any chance of stocking 3/8" endmills with clamp flats? In the mean time I bought a 1/4" wide diamond wheel that I plan to make an adapter to install it on my hand grinder for this purpose.

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Special order your end mills with flats. It's a few $ per mill and only adds a few days to shipping.

BROTHERFRANK said:

Even the 'holy grail' Nikken BT30 milling chucks I would only use for finishing because of the 75mm gage length (not my 1st choice). Many moons ago they used to offer it in a 65mm GL for BT30 which was better but then they stopped offering that

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Nikken SK10 holders come in 45mm gage length. I was running a high volume 8620 job across 3 brothers last year and picked up 15-20% in tool life from a 1" gage 3/8 solid holder to the super short sk10. They aren't cheap though... I think $250 each >.< I have about 10 and use Maritool Sk stuff for 95% of the rest. The 3/8 in question was a 5fl running 1/2" deep 7% stepover at 150 ipm

Runnout in aluminum for roughing is a "who gives a shit" concept to me ... In Steel you definately see the benefit because the chip load is much more critical.