Balancing tool holders

[Bob W.]

I just took delivery of a new Haas VF2-SS and I need to order 20 tool holders (CT40). I was planning on getting ER16 and ER32 collet holders and I was curious about balancing these. The machine has a 12000rpm spindle and I plan to run it at this fairly often. Will these tool holdres need to be balanced?

 

My current tool holders are made by YG though I'm not sure which brand I will go with for the new holders. How do YG and Command holders compare? Is there a web site for YG?

 

Thanks,

Bob

[Hardmill]

You generally dont need to balance til you get to 10,000rpm.

Im guessing youll be OK, if you see any significant problems then

you may want to consider balancing.

If I recall correctly it costs about $50.00+ to balance holders.

 

 

PEACE

[b_daddy]

Bob,

 

We have Command holders here and they are all balanced to 20,000 RPM (very nice product). They say any thing over 5,000 should be balanced, but that is a salesman talking. I personally don't like the ER collets that much for any thing other than drills, thay don't seem to hold as good as a TG collet.

 

HTH

[bogusmill]

What about heat shrink? Kennametal says they hold better than anything else, have more clearance, run truer, and need no balancing on carbide EM's.

[camgeneration]

Heat shrink holders are way better than er(hate). any good holder that is pre balanced will be fine. I like schunk heat shrink, and hydraulic. Any good heat shrink holder will run with less run out. this will payback in tool life, rigiditty, and accuracy.

[Rick Henrickson The Boeing Co.]

for spindle life I would balance cat is unbalanced from the get go BT you might not need to

[camgeneration]

I run cat and they are prebalanced from the factory.

[Bob W.]

With heat shrink how long does it take to change tools? I run a lot of prototypes so I change tools often and this could be an issue. I guess I could get 6-8 heat shrink holders for the standard sizes (.125", .1875", .375", etc...) and just leave the end mills in those permanently and use ER collets for the other stuff (drills, taps, etc...).

 

What do the heat shrink holders cost? How expensive is the device to heat them up for changing tools?

 

Thanks for the input,

Bob

[Rick Henrickson The Boeing Co.]

they are pretty spendy, we use haimer and it takes just a couple minutes to change out and remeasure.

 

cam I was talking about non balanced tools the BT is better for natural balance

[Tim Johnson]

Techniks comes out of the box balanced at 18k.

 

EDIT; They also have an inexpensive heat shrink machine on that site.

[camgeneration]

Rick, yes your right, the off size on ears put them naturally out of balance, but I do not pay extra, just get tools that are prebalanced. The hsk holders i used before had a symmetrical cross section, but they still had to be balanced for high speed use.

[mtnflyr]

BB,

We,ve been trying out HPI collet chucks for our new 13000 RPM spindles for milling. We've been very pleased with them. We're using a variety of styles. HMX comes in many different lengths and diameters for milling and the HMC holders are great for larger endmills i.e. 3/8" - 3/4".

They have a competitive price if you can get a distributor to deal with you. We got our local supplier to come down 33% to compete with the tool package we purchased with the machine.

[mtnflyr]

FYI, we have not had to balance any of these holders.

http://www.hpiamerica.com/

[Hymen]

Bob YG has a good line of holders balanced out of the box, they are good holders! I ran these on the same machine with out any issues holding tight tols. or chatter issues. That shop ran lots of alum.

I'm sure you would be more than happy with these and they cost a lot less than Command, at least the last time I checked.

[Bruce Caulley]

The holder manufacturer will usually state what they are balanced to. Note that the RPM is only half the issue. The G rating also comes into play. Most decent holders should be G2.5 @ 15000RPM.

 

Bruce

[Ocean Lacky™]

we use the Schunk SINO and TRIBOS holders...balanced to 20K. you can see the difference in the finish comparing these to the ER collets we used to use