I saw a Craigslist ad for a bunch of “Kwik-Switch” tool holders only a couple miles away so I had to go look. No idea what these were, but the seller explained, he used them on his Bridgeport but is downsizing and sold the mill. So, for a nominal price I took the box of them. They are actually pretty cool, you really can change tools by hand, a quarter turn of a ring, click the holder comes out, feel with the new holder for a tang alignment (easy and wide tolerance) push up lightly, pop, it’s in place.
But why is this any better than R8? Well, it comes with an R8 adapter on the socket that goes in the spindle, so I can swap back and forth as needed, no long term decisions here. For shorter people, you don’t need to reach up to the drawbar for tool changes, and let’s say you have a bolt circle where you have to position the table for each hole, spot drill, change to maybe a pilot drill, then change to finish drill, then maybe countersink, and perhaps chamfer. I either position the table once with DRO and run through all the tools, or for each tool, visit each hole position. And what makes this better is the Z height of each tool does not change, unlike R8 swaps.
A downside is it takes up more Z height by a couple inches, could hurt, but a Bridgeport has a pretty good working envelope.
The list prices of these parts are staggering new, and only frightening on eBay. I ended up with maybe $4K list for $100.