TTS Tool Holders- Collets

[Advil]

I have a Tormach and a lot of TTS tooling. It's good in the 1-2hp range and is inexpensive. Beyond that you need taper tooling. ER20 holders are most common and the "standard" for all the reasons rwm said above. You can also buy bulk TTS holders from eBay or AliExpress cheap in er20. I have some thoughts personally about set screw holders being slightly more rigid and slightly shorter than ER20 in my most common end mills size which is 5/16. Remember... 1hp. I do not have pull out issues with any of them.

Based on what is available today I would go with a lot of ER20 TTS holders for all end mills down to 1/8. Then a few ER16 which are also still out there cheap for 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32.

Er32 in as-needed one offs only for specific large tooling you cant mount any other way like a shell mill... TTS is not great for high rigidity with big tooling so you won't have many of these. Mostly for surface finishing, light passes.

 

[dabear3428]

an advantage of the R8 collets is that they eat up much less Z and for a small mill are a great idea. as well as no interference with lines of sight.

 

[rwm]

Tormach doesn't sell the shank as a separate part? I bought the assembled boring head from Tormach when I bought my machine. The shank has the same dimensions as the rest of their TTS accessories. Mine measured to 1.40" to the spindle seat.

Yes, It is available from Tormach for $50. But this only cost me $49.95 to make:




I may cut the groove later if I ever set up an ATC.

 

[rwm]

Ok, Ok. I put the ATC groove in it just to make you guys happy:


And while I was fooling with the boring head, I decided to make a counterweight. This thing can really shake my mill when I hit certain resonant frequencies. This should help.

 

[Larry$]

Tool pull out! We used Techniques ER32 on a 12 hp spindle. In a production environment cutting as deep & fast as it would go for the required finish. The only time we had slippage was when the tool wasn't in full depth of the collet. A setting stand was mounted to the bench so we could use a torque wrench to tighten the collet nuts to speciation. The collets used in production were replaced at least every year. You can buy collet wrenches as part of a torque wrench. We had an employee try to get more length out of a tool by only having it half way into the collet. It's surprising how far a bit will go when it comes out at 16,000rpm.

 

[rwm]

"It's surprising how far a bit will go when it comes out at 16,000rpm."
I'm kind of wondering that about my counterweight...

I enjoyed making this tool holder. I may go ahead and make one for a center drill. That could tolerate a little bit of runout. I don't think my machines are capable of .0002" TIR. I may shrink fit it to keep it as concentric as possible. I'll test the runout I achieved with the boring head holder before I proceed.

 

[dabear3428]

Ok, Ok. I put the ATC groove in it just to make you guys happy:
View attachment 506044

And while I was fooling with the boring head, I decided to make a counterweight. This thing can really shake my mill when I hit certain resonant frequencies. This should help.
View attachment 506045

You are good at that, can you make a kwik switch 200 version of that?

 

[verbotenwhisky]

I have ER32 and ER40 collets and end mills holders, I use the end mills holders for end mills and collects for other odds and ends.

 

[verbotenwhisky]

an advantage of the R8 collets is that they eat up much less Z and for a small mill are a great idea. as well as no interference with lines of sight.

True but spend the money for a good set.

 

[RJSakowski]

For most of the work on the mill, the TTS collet system works well. For those few times when I don't have sufficient clearance, I have my R8 collets to fall back on. The most common situation where I run out of Z is tapping. I made a tap follower that completely sits inside a 3/4" R* collet but the combination of the tap and wrench eat up the Z. My first tap follower consisted of simply a long spring which fit inside a 3/8" R8 collet and a pointed pin. Aside from having to capture the pin when removing the tap, it work well and consumed no extra z.