Category: Case Study

Microconic Eliminates Collet Damage & Saves OVER $533 a Day!

6/16/2016

The Chip Wrap Nightmare!
Superior Machined Products has decades of experience manufacturing implants, abutments, Multi fluted twist and spade drills, bone screws, analogs fixture mounts, all types of drivers and surgical tools

Superior brought in Masa Tool's Microconic F25M10 Cartridge and collets for use in sub spindle pickoff in producing dental implants.

Chip wrap on dental implant

According to Juan Maravilla at Superior Machined Products Before the Microconic System was installed

"An experienced machinist would bore a TF25 sub spindle soft emergency collet in the machine in order to achieve good concentricity. 5% of the parts would experience chip wrap around the chucking area of the implant."

"Every time the collet would chuck on the parts with chip wrap, it would leave an impression in the collet. Sometimes the chip would stay lodged in that impression and the parts run from that point on are scrapped due to the chip impressions on the part and once noticed, the collet would need to be replaced."

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Avinger Review of Microconic TF25 Collet System

5/18/2016

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Avinger Inc., based in Redwood City, California, designs, develops and manufactures precision medial device technology with the goal of helping patients keep their legs. Recently they began testing the Micoconic system on their Citizen L20 (7M8) Swiss Screw Machine using a Utilis 3000 series cutoff holder and an 1/5mm X 10mm insert. The bar stock was .225" OD round.

They where kind enough to share their test results with us.

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Cascading Failures stopped by Precision, Hardened & Ground Microconic UM collet for Dental Implant

9/30/2015

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Our customer was machining 6Al4V Titanium dental implants and scrap rates increased the longer our competitors collets where in use.

This root cause was primarily result of cutting the threads in the main spindle. Chips wrapped around the finished threads before the implant was handed over to the sub spindle collet for machining of the head hex and internal thread.

Collet wear & bad parts

The chip wrap of the dental implant part was periodic due to tool wear. Clamping on the chips, that where wrapped around the implant in the TF25 sub spindle collet, led to two collet wear problems in less than 10,000 parts on a swiss screw machine:

Deformation of the ID clamping surface of the collet
Bell mouthing of the face of the collet

Concurrently, there was a mushrooming of the Titinium head of the workpiece from the uneven clamping pressure due to the collet bell mouthing. Scrap rates and collet replacement times where not predictable in a lights out production environment.

Fig. 1: 6Al4V Titanium Dental Implant chip wrapping during threading on the main spindle

Fig. 2: Bell mouthing of competitors collet after 10,000 parts

In the competitors collet, the Titanium material started to yield where the chucking occurred (Fig.2) This caused an out of round situation and caused micro movement in the workpiece..

Fig. 3: ID wear and damage of competitors collet after 10,000 parts.

The unpredictable periodic clamping on the wrapped chips on the workpiece embedded chip impressions in the collet (Fig. 3) which in turn marked the next part when it was chucked on.

As a result the competitor's collet workholding lost it's chucking power from the bell mouthing in the front. By becoming out of round, parts lost their concentricity.

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Collet Workholding Concentricity from 0.0001" to 0.00015"

8/13/2014

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Article originally appeared in Cutting Tool Engineering March 2014 / Volume 66 / Issue 3

In the world of micromachining, precision is relative—the smaller the work, the greater the need for accuracy in all aspects of the process. End users must optimize the entire micromanufacturing system to be efficient, competitive and successful.

Traditional techniques for achieving precision may work well for macro-scale parts, but can be subtly awkward or downright clumsy when applied to smaller work. Workholding is a classic example of this, noted Matt Saccomanno, a principal who handles product design, engineering and R&D for Masa Tool Inc.

He added that a collet is often the best workholding method because it firmly grips the workpiece and is highly accurate in a production setting.

However, the collet system installed by the machine builder accommodates the largest workpiece the machine was designed for, such as a Swiss-style machine with a 20mm capacity.

Microconic workholding system consists of (clockwise, starting at 12 o’clock) a cartridge, collet, hex key wrench and collet wrench with graduations for adjusting the collet closure.

The Microconic system can be installed in the subspindle of a Swiss-style CNC lathe.

Although collets for smaller bores to hold smaller workpieces are available, the rest of the system (collet body, spindle nose and closing mechanism) is sized for 20mm, creating problems when chucking smaller parts, according to Saccomanno.

Therefore, Masa Tool developed the Microconic collet system specifically for holding workpieces from 10mm (0.39 ") to 0.75mm (0.03 ") in any machine that has a collet-type chuck. The system consists of two major components: the cartridge, which transforms the work spindle for miniature workholding, and the “right-sized” collet, which fits in the cartridge.

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Workholding: Hold Small Round Parts

7/2/1999

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This article originally appeared in Modern Machine Shop
Columns Post: 7/2/1999 STAN SEIBERT

When you need to make small parts, the size range of the 5C collet is where the best variety and value exist in machine tools and accessories. You don't want to sink capital into expensive, specialized machinery that will run nothing but small parts. But a 5C collet is pretty big compared to your 1/8-inch diameter part.

An adapter is available, however, that renders a common 5C machine tool capable of handling very small diameter parts. The new small parts adapter, manufactured by Masa Machine Tool Accessories, Oceanside, California, fits in any machine's 5C collet closer, just like a standard 5C collet, without any modifications or special mounting procedures.

With the adapter, any machine with a 5C collet closer can chuck workpieces in the range of 0.010 to 0.375-inch diameter (0.25 to 10 mm). Yes, I truly mean that a common CNC turret lathe with one-inch shank tooling and a brutally powerful hydraulic 5C collet closer can easily chuck fragile 0.010-inch diameter workpieces effectively and repeatably, without damage. Of course, I don't recommend using a machine like that to make a part that small. However, this shows the level of control that the adapter provides.

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breaking news

Microconic Eliminates Collet Damage & Saves OVER $533 a Day!

Avinger Review of Microconic TF25 Collet System

Cascading Failures stopped by Precision, Hardened & Ground Microconic UM collet for Dental Implant

Collet wear & bad parts

Collet Workholding Concentricity from 0.0001" to 0.00015"

Workholding: Hold Small Round Parts

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