TIR with different style tool holders

Hey guys,

I’ve been in a shop that used ER collets exclusively. I work in a shop that now uses the PowRgrip with press-fit collets and standard ER stuff. I’ve seen heat shrink, hydraulic, set-screw, all sorts of stuff. I just discovered Nikken Ultra-lock milling chucks.

I bring this list of tool holding up because I’m not sure who to trust. I hate indicating tools. It’s the bane of my existence. I started picking away at what system guarantees what and saw that few of these systems promise less than .0002 TIR. Is there any system where you essentially eliminate indicating tools?

I'm speaking more for reamers and finish endmills. I know roughing and general tools aren't always made to less than 2 tenths from a previous thread.

I’m specifically looking for a system to adopt for the mill at home. Nikken’s chucks came highly recommended, but for $400 a tool holder, I never want to lean over the table with an indicator again.

For the money, I like the new Techniks Low profile hydraulic chuck.
.0001 TIR at 3X tool diameter from the face.
$229.00 for a CAT40 1/2"

The one exkenna posted looks pretty good. I stay away from milling Chuck's, I've not had much success with them over the years.
The gage length on milling chucks is tool long to gain rigidity. IMHO I love the Maritool SK collet holders, great run-out for the money.
The Pioneer MX Mini chucks have Very little run-out as well

gets your self a optical presetter. you will see magnified tool runout on every tool.
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i have seen .005 to .020" dia difference on many different tool holding methods. collets get rusty effecting runout. i have seen hairline cracks in tool holders effect runout by how tight it is tightened. set screw holders obviously are effected by how tight they are tightened. many longer drills are not perfectly straight and many endmills are not sharpened with zero runout. literally you can change tool and get different runout cause runout is partially from the tool itself.
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the tool holder taper that goes in spindle obviously get dirty and damaged over time. and your machine spindle also gets dirty and damaged over time. usually on boring bars you cannot preset reliably to <.002" tolerance depends on tool gage length of course. the longer the tool the more the runout problem.
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often like a dog chasing its tail you can go round and round chasing low runout. when you measure with optical tool setter the runout on every tool every time many are surprised by runout amounts. after you measure over 10,000 tools its not so surprising i guess.
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with a boring bar you get different bore hole sizes depending on which machine boring bar is in of course cause some runout is from each machine spindle and each machine has different runout.

Anything with a collet or chuck is going to have variable accuracy depending on how everything seats when it is tightened down, even if everything is squeaky clean. So if you need .0002 or less runout every time you are going to have to check your set-up, no way around it.

you have a long tool (12 to 24" long) in a collet holder and when 1/2 tight you bang on end of tool with a lead hammer you might be surprised at how it lowers runout.
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optical tool presetter if i see a tool with over the maximum runout i know will start to cause problems based on last 10,000 tools measured often it needs a little help to center the tool tip.... often it aint automatic to .0001" without checking it and adjusting if needed.
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long spot drills in particular it helps to keep runout low if you want spot accurately located. my experience is collet automatically centers spot drill tip less then 50% of the time unless its given a little help

So... I’m revisiting the subject because we ran into this the other day. Most of the cool-guy holders only come in nominal sizes. What about reamers? What’s so hard about making shrink fit tool holders that you can’t just offer a custom-size for whatever tool you want?

Maybe Frank can chime in since he makes a few flavors of heat shrink. Sure, there’s some engineering involved, but making a .218 shrink fit holder can’t be all that different from a .250 holder, right? I’m sure I’m wrong, it would just be cool to know why. Maybe it’s the honing that limits the variety?

Obviously you don’t want to stock hundreds of sizes, as you’d never sell them all, but a custom size for 3 times the price might be worth it. If it’s good for 2000 tool changes, and that saves me the 5 minutes of farting around with a hammer and indicator, plus scrap made for mistakes, plus spindle down time, etc. etc. then it’d be worth it.

Side note; I’m definitely looking into the optical preseter for multiple reasons now, I appreciate the suggestion.

thunderskunk said:

So... I’m revisiting the subject because we ran into this the other day. Most of the cool-guy holders only come in nominal sizes. What about reamers? What’s so hard about making shrink fit tool holders that you can’t just offer a custom-size for whatever tool you want?

Maybe Frank can chime in since he makes a few flavors of heat shrink. Sure, there’s some engineering involved, but making a .218 shrink fit holder can’t be all that different from a .250 holder, right? I’m sure I’m wrong, it would just be cool to know why. Maybe it’s the honing that limits the variety?

Obviously you don’t want to stock hundreds of sizes, as you’d never sell them all, but a custom size for 3 times the price might be worth it. If it’s good for 2000 tool changes, and that saves me the 5 minutes of farting around with a hammer and indicator, plus scrap made for mistakes, plus spindle down time, etc. etc. then it’d be worth it.

Side note; I’m definitely looking into the optical preseter for multiple reasons now, I appreciate the suggestion.

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On a collet, any collapse from nominal throws all guarantees of precision out the window. That's why all the high end systems are nominal only. Even on ER, the high precision collets are nominal only.

The best solution is to tool up with all nominal shank tools.

Idk how it is over there, but on this side of the pond metric machine reamers always have nominal shanks, and with everywhere carrying at least 10μm increments there is never reason to use an inch reamer with an odd shank.

I have a more or less full set of port cavity form reamers that require extremely careful runout control, with a combination of metric and inch shanks. I use hydraulics for those wherever possible, but finding inch size hydraulics meant importing them from the US, which is rarely a smooth experience for whatever reason, so I decided not to bother with inch size hydraulics. For those I use high precision ER (also a challenge to get in true inch nominals over here, but possible).

If you're just throwing a drill in there then standard precision ER with collapse range has you covered.

I've seen far too many HSS reamers with shanks that are not true to the cutting diameter, usually due to a curvature along the ground shank. I would not expect them to run true without some correcting during assembly.

If you get your perfect tool holders you'll want to just use solid carbide reamers, those don't have a banana issue.

Regardless, a well made (concentric) rotary tool holder jig with a good digital camera and appropriate lens will give you "out of the machine" truing capability. You'll need real spindle-level accuracy to make it work right, but it's doable.

Milland said:

I've seen far too many HSS reamers with shanks that are not true to the cutting diameter, usually due to a curvature along the ground shank. I would not expect them to run true without some correcting during assembly.

If you get your perfect tool holders you'll want to just use solid carbide reamers, those don't have a banana issue.

Regardless, a well made (concentric) rotary tool holder jig with a good digital camera and appropriate lens will give you "out of the machine" truing capability. You'll need real spindle-level accuracy to make it work right, but it's doable.

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I've said it before many times, but reamers are generally an absolute last resort for me. They rarely ever cut the exact hole you want them to, sometimes close, sometimes not. The coaxility you mention is just one reason of many that they are unreliable.

Beyond the form reamers I mentioned above, I have about two parallel reamers in the entire shop. I invested heavily in single point boring tools and I don't regret it one bit.

gregormarwick said:

I've said it before many times, but reamers are generally an absolute last resort for me. They rarely ever cut the exact hole you want them to, sometimes close, sometimes not. The coaxility you mention is just one reason of many that they are unreliable.

Beyond the form reamers I mentioned above, I have about two parallel reamers in the entire shop. I invested heavily in single point boring tools and I don't regret it one bit.

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1) chucking reamers almost always have runout so you get a bell mouthed or oversized hole at beginning of hole til the part material can overcome the runout. a soft material like aluminum might take considerable depth (over 0.2")to do this compared to steel (0.1" +/- it varies in depth)
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2) chucking reamers have relatively short length flutes and if straight and not spiral flutes will improve but not perfectly fix the lobed out of round and not straight drilled pilot hole. lobed holes are common on hole starts and curved holes are common at higher feed rates with duller tools (drill bending). thus a .5000 hole 3.0" depth even when a new .5000 reamer goes in by hand easily a 3" long pin gage may not go in all the way but tighten up going in the not straight hole the deeper it goes in. usually a .5005" spiral flute reamer will work so .5000 pin gages goes in 3.0" deep
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3) reamers can come every .001" and usually every .0005", many places will ream -.004" and reream to -.001 or +.001 depending on whats is wanted
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4) coolant and cutting oil do effect reaming, a dry reamer will bounce more (lobed holes) and material sticking to cutting edges will in general give a rougher and oversized hole. sometimes hole roughness from dry reaming and its lobed hole and not straight hole is so bad it appears as a undersized hole. coolant and or cutting oil gives more consistent repeatable reamed hole sized normally
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5) reamers are often only choice for over 6x dia to length depths. that is say you got .2500" dia hole and want 2.000 depth so 8x length to dia ratio obviously no way to bore with a higher accuracy than reaming compared to regular boring bars and regular chucking reamers
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some use burnishing and hones to improve surface finish and true up a less than perfect hole, all depends on tolerances

runout

say i use a optical tool presetter and set a 10.0000" boring bar obviously in
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1) a particular cnc with its own spindle runout i can get a 10.002" bored hole
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2) a different cnc with its runout same boring bar gives a 9.998 bored hole
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3) 3rd cnc can give a 10.0000 bored hole., thats kind of basic each machines spindle dirty or clean have its own worn spindle runout. spend $1,000,000. on a perfect tool holder and not going to make a difference cause some of the runout coming from the machine spindle
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obviously a tool holder salesman not normally going to mention this basic fact of life. take a test shaft and measure spindle runout on each machine weekly, after recording 1000's of readings of a machine or better yet on many machines you will find out what is "normal" to expect in runout.
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and measure each tool in tool holder runout in a optical tool presetter and record 10,000 readings to get a ideal what is normal among different tool holder types. by the way i can take same tool and take out and put back in tool presetter and get easily .0004" different runout amounts. i measure optical tool presetter with a calibration test bar every day often it varies .001" day to day over the years. also the longer the tool setup the more it varies. like anything that needs calibration checking and adjustment you can measure day to day variability. same as any measuring tool especially larger measuring tools. some of this is just temperature changes effecting calibration.

I've seen with some machines where you can get better tool change repeatability by setting the tool to oversize/overweight. The arm runs slower and puts the tool holder in the spindle more accurately. Of coarse some machines do not have this feature.

Hello Frank,
Im am partial to all of your holders, but I have a few Schunk hy-dro's that are amazing. Problem is they are very expensive especially the reducing bushings that are needed. I have been hoping for years to see you enter this market and offer these. So today was a perfect time to ask. Any interest coming in our future?

mtlhe said:

Hello Frank,
Im am partial to all of your holders, but I have a few Schunk hy-dro's that are amazing. Problem is they are very expensive especially the reducing bushings that are needed. I have been hoping for years to see you enter this market and offer these. So today was a perfect time to ask. Any interest coming in our future?

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We are always interested in expanding our product line. The problem is everytime we buy a new machine hoping to use it for a new product line we end up using it just to maintain our current item stock levels. Any new items or specials are already in 2020. We do have a few more machines coming in before the end of the year so hopefully that helps.

fmari --MariTool- said:

The problem is everytime we buy a new machine hoping to use it for a new product line we end up using it just to maintain our current item stock levels.

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First world problems!

fmari --MariTool- said:

We are always interested in expanding our product line. The problem is everytime we buy a new machine hoping to use it for a new product line we end up using it just to maintain our current item stock levels. Any new items or specials are already in 2020. We do have a few more machines coming in before the end of the year so hopefully that helps.

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My condolence's, that just sounds like an awful problem to have. Please buy some extra machines next time because it would be awesome to get a wider range CAT40 SK Holders!