Shrink fit or Hydraulic tool holders?

[Machineguy]

Chime in. What has worked best?

Cost?

best brands?

Issues?

 

15000 RPM spindle

[cool]

Ask your tool suppliers, they will not promise you anything on the hydraulic clamping force. on the end they will say the best is shrink fit. 

 

Christian

[jlw™]

Used both extensively, prefer shrink fit hands down. Especially for long reach or sneaking in tight spots.

[Guest]

I'm a Rego-Fix Power Grip fan over shrink.

[jlw™]

We had one of those, they claimed it to be "stronger" than the shrink fit but we had form taps spin in them but not the shrink. Not to mention the machine would not be strong enough to pull a couple collets a day. We had a pile at the end of the week that some one would spend a couple hours jerking out with a custom slide hammer we made just for the job of pulling those collets.

 

As far as run out or difference in tool life, the power grip and heat shrink were indistinguishable.

 

We had some 22mm corner rad end mills that had almost 4 hours tool life in hydraulic holders, went to a stubby heat shrink and the life jumped to over 8 hours.

 

Both are expensive to get into, money would probably be the determining factor for a small shop.

 

Imo the heat shrink is safer, I never saw it but heard tell of the rego collets breaking. I think in those cases the collets had some "interfenece" in the machine. Having said that, if you have a tool break smooth off in a heat shrink it's very difficult if not impossible to get the broke tool out as you have to heat and work on it hot. The process of breaking usually mucks up the face of the heat shrink holder too also some times making it harder to get the broke tool out. An air gun usually works better than anything.

 

Same condition in a power grip, you lose an expensive collet but a collet cost way less than a shrink holder.

 

I like the shrink for how small you can get the long reach holders, you can sneak any where with them. I have ran a 20mm em in a 400mm shrink holder with way better than acceptable results.

[Fred @ Slate Industries]

Hydraulic is heavy , might not be an issue at 15,000 though

[crazy^millman]

Something I have seen from HR in some of the bigger companies that have shrink fit. They have major heart burn over something that heats of holder to the point where it will burn someone. The gases that come off the holder or tools when heat is applied is also another things they use to have shrink fit removed.

 

In the 10 different companies I have seen the Rego-Fix used I have not seen or heard of the collets being a problem to come out. I have to suspect something else going on. Also the Secure-Grip cap to keep the collet from backing out is a good thing or you can go to the Weldon flat insert style. I have used Hydraulic Chucks with good results, Rego-Fix with good results and Shrink fit with okay results. Haimer has about the best system for balancing shrink fit up to 50K rpm. I just witnessed a spindle swap out on a JOBS that was at over 6000 hours. The spindle was swapped due to a lose wire in the control cabinet, not because it went bad. Everyone considered the life well past the normal due to the balancing done on all holders that went to that machine. At $60k a spindle money well spent.

 

Really comes down to the type of work you will be done and how much you plan to push the machine and tool holding. Then from there you use that will give you the best results. Money spent on good quality tool holding seems like a huge un needed expense upfront. When you don't have problems with surface finish, quality and your spindle doesn't need to be rebuilt or placed every year then you see that was money well spent. Pay for it now or pay for it later, but that is the thing about doing it wrong you will pay for it one way or another. Do it right and odds are in your favor to have a process that supports the people and allows the technology to be used to it fullest potential.

[Newbeeee™]

We rum showa miron chuck for roughing and shunk hydraulics for finishing amd drilling on 10k.

For the 15k we use big daishowas

[Bob W.]

I have both shrink and hydraulic and while they both work well I prefer hydraulic when clearances allow.  I feel that hydraulic has better damping characteristics and produce a better finish.  There have been a few instances where I pulled a chattering tool from a shrink fit holder and put it in a hydraulic holder and it cut butter smooth with the same parameters.  The shrink fit holders are so dang rigid they don't dampen the vibrations much.  For 5-axis where you have extended reaches and tight spots while indexing it is hard to beat shrink fit.  For smaller tools with 1/8" shanks we will use a Schunk hydraulic holder with a Haimer shrink extension.  At ~$600 each it is an expensive way to hold a tool but after all is said and done (Shunk holder, sleeve, Haimer extension) the run out is typically .0001" which is pretty hard to believe.  Both Schunk and Haimer make grade AAA stuff.

[xirdneh1234]

I know you explicitly asked about heat shrink & hydraulic but I'll add a +1 to Rego-Fix PG.

 

If you are curious, I believe they will let you demo a few holders and a press (manual version I think) to evaluate.

 

That being said, we have been using Rego-Fix for almost a year and a half now. I am questionable to the comment about the collets breaking. I do aerospace prototype work and I am always switching tools out of holders for different jobs on a daily basis (I avoided Shrink for this reason).  I would have more seriously looked into shrink if we were going to do pre-set and stored tooling but our part material/geometry varies so much that it's just not a financially feasible option for us at this point.

 

For the record I have never, ever had 1) tool pull out 2) broken collets 3) any wear more than a slight dulling of the DLC finish on the collet. They see 15k and 120% load in our Okuma without a single issue.

 

I have limited experience with heat shrink and hydraulic so I cannot comment on a direct comparison.

 

About the only downside for me with the PG holders is the very specific amount of shank length that must be clamped. I use a lot of carbide from Destiny Tool, and RobbJack, and unless I ask each of them to grind to a specific shank length I will sometimes have a tool hanging to far out, or end up to short in the collet. This sometimes leads to having more expensive endmills if they need to start with a longer blank because the normal blank is to short.

[Pitka_Guru]

We use Big Daishowa Mega Micro Series collet chucks. They're balanced to 50k, 3 micron (.0001")  runout at 4xD and they have small diameter clamping nuts for tight clearance. 1/8" collet chucks have a 10mm nose diameter, not as small as shrink but pretty good for our type of work.  I've never had any pullout and I can use the same holder for a different diameters. They are a bit pricey they work great. 

 

I avoided shrink fit for same reasons xirden stated. 

 

http://www.big-daishowa.com/product_page/data_01_mega-chuck.php

 

 

[gcode]

We use a lot of Rego-Fix and they've done well

There have been failures, but every one was traced back to human error.. not hardware failure

The tool's shank must be the correct size.. even a couple of tenths under can be fatal

Once the tool crib ground a big flat on a 1" carbide end mill, then put it in a Rego-Fix.. on the 2nd pass, endmill just fell out

They cannot take any kind of hit either... even a minor contact between the collet and the part will most likely result in failure.

[Mike@Lustre]

We use Big Daishowa Mega Micro Series collet chucks. They're balanced to 50k, 3 micron (.0001")  runout at 4xD and they have small diameter clamping nuts for tight clearance. 1/8" collet chucks have a 10mm nose diameter, not as small as shrink but pretty good for our type of work.  I've never had any pullout and I can use the same holder for a different diameters. They are a bit pricey they work great. 

 

I avoided shrink fit for same reasons xirden stated. 

 

http://www.big-daishowa.com/product_page/data_01_mega-chuck.php

 

 

 similar set-up to what we run , we run close to 20K spindle rpm with these on a regular basis , granted we are not using any tooling larger than 3/8"  . we also use double "A" collets with the chucks and have not had any tooling come loose .

[Machineguy]

This is a big help guys. In about 2-3 weeks I'll know what the owners want to spring for in new machines.

What I'm looking at is taking on some aluminum plate work. I need to remove material as fast as possible in the rough process. That's means up to 1 in deep pockets with a lot of islands. With a 15000 RPM spindle I can push 200+ in a min. at full depth. I don't want the tool coming out.

This job is about 8000 hrs a year running. That's a min of 2 machines, more likely 3 just to do the work.

 

So now the wait period.

 

 

Thanks all.

 

Machineguy

[jlw™]

Good tooling is just as important!

 

Love those alumagators from GW Schultz and the streaker from imco.

[Machineguy]

anybody running a Doosan DNM650HS ?

[Redfire427]

I have both shrink and hydraulic and while they both work well I prefer hydraulic when clearances allow.  I feel that hydraulic has better damping characteristics and produce a better finish.  There have been a few instances where I pulled a chattering tool from a shrink fit holder and put it in a hydraulic holder and it cut butter smooth with the same parameters.  The shrink fit holders are so dang rigid they don't dampen the vibrations much.  For 5-axis where you have extended reaches and tight spots while indexing it is hard to beat shrink fit.  For smaller tools with 1/8" shanks we will use a Schunk hydraulic holder with a Haimer shrink extension.  At ~$600 each it is an expensive way to hold a tool but after all is said and done (Shunk holder, sleeve, Haimer extension) the run out is typically .0001" which is pretty hard to believe.  Both Schunk and Haimer make grade AAA stuff.

I would agree 100% with Bob's comments. Damping is a huge issue on long hangouts, and the hydraulic holders do a great job of keeping this in check. We use Haimer/Command for shrink fit, and Nikken/Lyndex for our collet chucks. Both are pricey but the quality and performance are top shelf.

 

Carmen

[Newbeeee™]

I would agree 100% with Bob's comments. Damping is a huge issue on long hangouts, and the hydraulic holders do a great job of keeping this in check. We use Haimer/Command for shrink fit, and Nikken/Lyndex for our collet chucks. Both are pricey but the quality and performance are top shelf.

 

Carmen

+1 to this but...

We have a production job in ally using 2flute short flute but long cutters.

6mm dia 90mm out (by memory)

8mm dia longer out (by memory)

Hydraulic was first call and nope. Shrink was next and the tools wrung like a church bell.

In the end we used std ER32 collet chuck and it worked like a charm. A mate said try it as he had stumbled upon this years ago and yup!