Royal quick grip collet chucks

hey guys,

My company is quoting out a new machine and our rep is pushing for us to switch over to the quick grip collet system. If anyone here has any working experience with this and can offer some pros and cons, id love to hear them before we make our final decision. One thing that might be an issue is the housing seems bigger than the standard royal accu length collet chuck which could cause some clearance issues with our radial tools.

I have the Hardinge FlexC collet system. They work as they should................. no issues.............they are great for bar work. Good concentricity and plenty 'o grippin' power even with smooth collets. Royal and Hardine collets are about the same price($300+/-)...........but Hardinge has a promo going on right now that will blow Royal outa the water............buy the collet chuck and get 5 collets plus the install tool free.............saves ya around $2000.....................

Only cons I can think of would be clearance as mentioned above and $$$

otherwise they are great

Money aside (collets are EXPENSIVE - QG80 collets are about $450 each), they are really good. Highly accurate, repeatable, extremely quick changeover.

Drawbacks would be things like, if you do any slug work you pretty much have to use a machinable collet and cut a step unless you're clamping fairly deep. I want to say clamping less than around 1/2 the length of the collet will cause it to pop out of the chuck. If it can be factored into the job, then the cost is not really an issue, I suppose. But it sure adds up. Custom collets can be had from Royal but the cost and lead time are insane (twice the cost of a machinable collet and 8 week lead time).

Again outside of cost, the QG collets are an excellent workholding system.

I ran demo machines with those and they're great. Very expensive, but beautiful pieces.

@JESPERTECH how do you machine your emergency collets when you do slug work?

I have used a couple strategies machining my QG-80 collets:

1. 1/2" boring bar with CCMT insert
2. Whizcut C5 Boring bar for smaller diameter stuff and cleaning up inside corners of step collets

I have made the mistake of not boring out the ID of my larger diameter collets before placing a plug in the ID (typically with a 40mm Emergency collet)...results in some "interesting" parts.

To me the cost isn't as bad as some others.
Have a Mori Seiki SL3-H with a Riken AD-65 collet chuck and the collets are $800 each.