[Source] Quick Change Mill Tooling, Anyone Made Their Own?

T Bredehoft

T Bredehoft

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I'm making a product which involves ctr drill, drill, c'sink, tap for 6 4-40 flat head screws per unit. I'd dearly love to have plans for building my own quick change tooling for my PM25 mill (R8, but could be mounted in a collet). I've used larger sized QuikChange tooling but that was 15 years ago and I can't remember just how it worked.

I'm open to suggestions, but those should not include "buy what you want"!

The largest diameter tooling I use has 1/4" shaft, its a countersink.
 
Have you considered reproducing the Tormach tool holding system? They use an R8 collet with a flat ground face that butts up to the back of uniformly machined tool holders. You can surface grind (or "buy" their R8 collet) and make your own tool holders. Given the material costs to make the holders, however, I'm not sure you would be saving much money over just buying into the system.
 
I've thought about Tormach, etc, but even $795 is a considerable amount, compared to what I'm getting for my labor ("Thanks, Dad!") For the job I'm doing I need four specific holders, and one driver, not a set of 20 or so pieces. I looked a the manual assortments, ($189.00) and none of them will fit the drills or taps I'm using. I already have an R8 collet. If I make a Driver and four tool holders, I'd be considerably farther ahead.

I've used quick change tooling with a slip release, or with a wrench release, maybe I can come up with something like that. Twist lock for everything that turns clockwise, and a set screw for the tapping head. No, the tapping head won't auto-reverse, I'm not that talented.
 
I was thinking you could make some tool holders to fit the collet they sell. That way the tools will fit for sure.

Most of the bigger tool holding systems are large and rather expensive. Hope you find what you're looking for.
 
Royal looks good but it costs more than my mill. I've got some ideas, once I get some free time I'll see what I can whip up. I'll try to keep drawings of what I do.
 
The Tormach TTS system uses ER collet holders with a 3/4" shank. My particular system uses ER20 collets. When I got my Tormach 770, I bought their TTS system but since then, I have added equivalent tool holders from various sources. I bought a supply of collets in common end mill diameters and a full set of 2 - 13mm collets.

The primary advantage of the TTS system is that the z axis position is fixed and well defined. Tools can be interchanged without having to rezero the z axis.

I also converted my old mill/drill to the TTS system. I purchased a 3/4" R8 collet and ground the end flat so the TTS tool holders reference the spindle face. I still have my R8 collets for larger end mills or cases where I might want more clearance but my go-to tool holding is the TTS system.
 
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The tooling you described is bread and butter for a Walhstorm fully automatic drill chuck. They're awesome for stuff like this, and even have four jaws instead of three that can positively engage the square drive on a tap.
 
If the parts are all identical, make jigs that can center the hole quickly and repetitivly. Then just change the part.
Center drill all the parts, then through hole them, then countersink, and tap.
Centerdrill on the mill, maybe through hole on the drill press if possible to save time.

Sent from somewhere in East Texas by Jake Parker!
 
I'm stopping at Harbor Freight today to see if I can snag a quick change set up for hand drills, then put my various tools in the holders. It would be worth the study. As to jigs, I'm putting screws around the circumference of a 1 1/2 diameter aluminum tube, spaced every 120º, on both ends. So a jig won't do it. Success will be reported and possibly illustrated here, failure not so much.
 
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