via Production Engineering Solutions

The precise and stable clamping of small workpieces in the sub-spindle of sliding head machines has long been an issue for turned parts manufacturers. Masa says it has revolutionised this problem for manufacturers to deliver improved precision workholding.

Until now, this popular solution has been specified primarily on 20 and 32mm capacity sliding head machines. However, the demand for the system has now seen Masa expand the series to cater for manufacturers working on 10 and 12mm diameter capacity machines.

To understand the Microconic system, manufacturers must first consider that only three things are in physical contact with the workpiece, the cutting tool, coolant/cutting fluid and the workholding. The Microconic over-grip collet system ultimately allows manufacturers to rethink what is possible.

This innovative workholding system consists of a cartridge and precision collet. The over-grip collet fits inside a cartridge and is accurately adjusted before it is fitted directly into the existing collet sleeve with no machine adaptations required.

The patented over-grip collets can open up to 4mm larger than the clamping diameter and also incorporate an ejection guide sleeve blank. This helps the end user to solve the difficulty of ejecting parts from the collets after machining and allows manufacturers to reach behind flanges, parts with heads or any other enlarged feature.
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Ideal for processing parts with stepped features such as connectors, screws or other common components, the over-clamp system can clamp over the protruding features and securely hold on the main body of components. The collets are available with clamping diameters from 0.2mm to 10mm, meaning the most fragile of parts can be clamped safely and precisely. With concentricity between 3 to 5µm, the Masa Microconic system is perfect for high-precision machining.

Previously, the system was available with F20, F25 and F37 style collets and this has been expanded over time. Now, it is offered with F15 and F16 to deliver high-precision clamping for challenging components. The F15 M5 cartridge works in synergy with most 10 to 16mm capacity machine tools from manufacturers like Star, Citizen, Tsugami and Maier whilst the F16 M5 variant is perfect for other machine tool brands such as Citizen, Hanwha, Tornos and Nexturn to name a few.

Commenting upon the expanded range, Floyd Automatic Tooling managing director, Richard Floyd says: “The expansion to the line has been sought after for a long time. This is a credit to the success of the Masa Microconic collets for 20mm and 32mm diameter capacity machines.

“Small-diameter sub-spindle clamping and over-gripping applications have historically been a bane for users of sliding head turning centres. This radical, but elegant solution brings repeatability and precision to small part turning, solving the challenge of clamping difficult parts.”
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Floyd Automatic Tooling
www.floydautomatic.co.uk

OCEANSIDE, CA.  - At IMTS 2022 we where visited by the great folks at GIE Media, Inc. who publish Today's Medical Developments, Aerospace Manufacturing and Design and Today’s eMobility. They asked Matt Saccomanno, the inventor of the Microconic system to give them an on-camera overview of our products and how they work.
 
As you probably already know, Masa’s Microconic Cartridge and Collet assembly is designed to vector the chucking force directly over the holding surface in your Swiss type CNC screw machine. This means that the chucking force can be reduced while at the same time the holding power is increased. This opens up the possibility of shifting part operations from the main to the sub-spindle and dramatically reducing cycle time. 20% ~ 40% cycle time reduction is commonly achieved.​

At IMTS 2022, we expanded our Microconic line of swiss type CNC machine workholding. The new push type F15M5 and F16M5 cartridges replace the standard TF15 and TF16 collets in your CNC spindle. This enables you to use the newly introduced Microconic UM5 collet series with the Micrograd Dial Wrench to achieve superior stability with precise, calibrated, repeatable setting of collet closure. The off-the-shelf Microconic system concentricity of the cartridge and collet system combination is guaranteed to be within 5µm (0.0002") in production use.

Both the F15M5 and F16M5 cartridges are a micro-workholding system for use in high precision, small diameter CNC turning applications which enables you to move more work to the sub spindle operations and reduce cycle time. ​

The F15M5 cartridge is compatible with spindles that accept Schaublin F15 76-580, E120, Southwick & Meister TF15 and Hardinge TF15 / 4607 collets, while the F16M5 cartridge is compatible with spindles that accept Schaublin F16 76-1076, E1212, Southwick & Meister TF16 and Hardinge TF16 / 4609 collets.

Along with the new smaller cartridges comes a comprehensive series of UM5 collets that are ideally suited for small diameter part sizes ranging from 0.2mm/.008" to 5.5mm/.217" in diameter. These are available in regular type UM5 collets as well as all three types of Microconic's T, V and W type Over-Grip collets. Masa Tool offers the most unique variety of over-grip collets in the industry.

And yes, if you listened closely to the video, you heard correctly, Matt spilled the beans on the new product that we'll be releasing  next: The F13M5 Cartridge.  And after that, we're going to heed that advise of "go big or go home.  Yea, that was a spoiler alert. 

Since 1973, Micro-Matics of Fridley, MN, has been manufacturing CNC Swiss precision screw machine products including many kinds of contacts & pins, ground shafts, hardened bushings, rivets, screws, spacers and other custom parts for the medical, dental, aerospace, commercial, defense, computer, telecommunications and automotive industries.

According to Jason Wobig, Operations Manager, "Micro-Matics is primarily an aerospace and medical components, Swiss machining job shop. We make components that are thousandths of an inch up to an 1-1/4" in diameter. We started out with the old manual style, Cam driven Swiss machines and we're one of the largest Escomatic shops in the Midwest.  And as the company's grown and evolved, we've turned into Swiss job shop, mostly Citizen machines like the M16,  a L12, and a M32, as well as a few Star and Tsugami machines that give us a wide variety of capabilities."

In 1996, Matt Saccomanno, CEO of Masa Tool, was frustrated with the limitations of conventional collets and workholding systems when performing secondary machining operations so his solution was to develop a high-precision, collet-type workholding device for small parts machining.

The Microconic system consists of a cartridge and collet, with the cartridge fitting in the machine just like a standard legacy collet. The cartridge is a self-contained precision mechanism using the machine’s standard collet closing function, which means that the Microconic system can be used on any machine utilizing 5C, TF20, TF25 or TF37 collets. 

According to Saccomanno "Since a collet system for any given machine must be made large enough to fit the maximum workpiece diameter capacity of the machine, the result is the standard collet mechanism is designed to handle the largest workpieces, which means it is excessively forceful and bulky when used for the smaller workpieces. Smaller parts get sacrificed, because they typically require a higher degree of accuracy and the workholding is more critical."

The Microconic system consists of the cartridge, which fits into your machine like a standard collet, and the Microconic collets which fit into Masa's unique cartridge.  Every Microconic cartridge comes standard with extended nose for unsurpassed rigidity because of it's single piece construction.

"In fact, the cartridge is so accurate that it can be used as a gauge to verify machine spindle accuracy," said Pakiz.

Thayer explained how the Microconic system has worked for Micro-Matics "With the Masa system we're able to dial in a nice specific tension to hold that catheter part without crushing it or deforming it at all and having it on center.  In a nutshell, we get better quality parts consistently with tighter tolerances. It's lead to a really significant improvement, it's increased throughput, so we have more parts at the end of the day."

"As a result of the implementation, the scrap rate on this part dropped dramatically once we added the new Masa system by at least 30%." added Wobig. 

According to Masa Tool, the Microconic cartridge  concentricity is guaranteed to be within 5µm (.0002") runnout and the collets are hardened and precision ground to the highest quality standards. The regular, UM10,  10mm collets, that  Micro-Matics is using in their F20M10 Cartidge are available from Ø0.2mm (.008") to 10mm (.394").  In additon to the TF 20 spindles, the same collets can be used in TF25, TF37 and 5C sub spindles.

"With the Microconic system, we didn't need to buy any special collets for any specific profile, we just got the actual diameter for the OD of the part and we're running it with that. The spaces in between on that collet is small enough that it's not distorting the round to flat portion if it even gets into there at all. So there's no timing issues at set-up. We just put it in there, set our tension, and start picking them off." added Wobig

Thayer continued "The extended nose pieces on the Microconic cartridge helps on the catheter tips because  you can get closer up to where I actually have a supporting back end.   Because if I'm too far away from that supporting back and you have more of a tendency to crush the front of that part. The Microconic gives me a better tension on the part.  On the distal coupler, we have to use a boring bar, or a facing tool to create the back face, which is round. We'd have a lot of trouble trying to hold without nibs or anything on there. And this holds it so that the part stays a little more square, and we're able to turn it better."

When dealing with very small parts and setting with small gage pins, accidents do sometimes happen.  "The only problem I've had with it was when somebody was trying to set the collet tension with a pin. They put the pin into the slot and not the hole and wrecked the collet. Because the pin was able to fit inside the slot so when they started tightening it up, and the pins started deforming the collet was wrecked because it wasn't in the hole in the center." said Thayer.

Masa has indicated that they will release a new TF 15 and TF16 Cartridge with an entire series of smaller 5mm capacity collets at IMTS 2022.

Masa Tool's Microconic cartridge is made of exotic high-chromium tool steel, triple tempered and cryogenically treated to provide stable construction.  All functional seating surfaces are ground with extreme precision on a one-piece, ultra-rigid body structure.

“The cartridge can be used as a calibration gage to verify the machine spindle accuracy,” Co-owner Chip Prescott notes.

Microconic collets are finished to exacting standards with a five-step grinding process that removes the effect of heat-treat warpage. Also, the proprietary Microconic form of the closure surfaces is inherently more accurate than traditional collets, providing for a greater full-accuracy working range.
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Cartridges are available to fit in push-type dead-length collet closers and also draw-type closers: F20M10 (for TF20 collet replacement), F25M10 (for TF25 collet replacement), and 5CM10 (for 5C collet replacement). All of these cartridges use the same Microconic UM10 collets, with more cartridge sizes in development to be released soon.

The push-type F201M10 micro-workholding cartridge system replaces F20-201 cartridges allowing the user of Microconic collets to achieve concentricity within 5µm (0.0002") in production use.

For use in high precision, small diameter CNC turning applications, it enables users to move more work to the sub-spindle for reduced cycle time.

The F201M10 cartridge is compatible with spindles that accept F20-201 collets including DIN 136E, Meister Swiss 136E, Schaublin F20 (76-201), Southwick & Meister F20-201, KEB (MasWerks) MC20-201, and Hardinge F20-201/4709 collets.

This article originally appeared in
Today's Medical Developments
July 5, 2018

Masa Tool’s Microconic push-type F201M10 cartridge pairs with its Microconic collets for concentricity said to be within 5 microns (0.0002") in production use. The cartridge is a micro-workholding system for use in high-precision, small-diameter CNC turning applications. The cartridge is compatible with spindles that accept F20-201 collets.

The cartridge and accompanying collet are designed to vector the chucking force directly over the holding surface, reducing the chucking force while also increasing the holding power. This reduces chucking damage on the workpiece and reduces cycle times by 20 to 40 percent, the company says. 

The cartridge’s solid extended nose enables access for tooling and coolant with minimal overhang. Its core diameter is a single-piece construction that is designed to maintain 5 microns (0.002") concentricity at the extended nose tip. Used with the company’s Micrograd wrench, the cartridge features micrometer dial control of collet clamping pressure regardless of the machine’s hydraulic or pneumatic collet closing force. The cartridge is suited for small-diameter parts ranging from 0.22 mm (0.008") to 10 mm (0.3934") in diameter.

"Micro-movement" of the workpiece is reduced, resulting in a longer tool life, better finishes, fewer chatter problems, and less damage to the workpiece. The cartridge eliminates secondary operations, saves time and enables operations to be done in the subspindle. Broaching, milling, saw cutting/slotting, turning, boring and drilling can be machined in the subspindle.

We have just released the NEW 2018-2019 Masa Tool Catalog! Our first batch of new catalogs is shipping directly to our IMTS booth in Chicago for release, but you can download your own copy right here!

OCEANSIDE, CA - Masa Tool has just released the newest product in the Microconic line of cartridges for swiss machine workholding. The NEW push type F201M10 Cartridge replaces the Tornos F20-201 collet in your CNC spindle. This enables you to use our Microconic collets to achieve concentricity guaranteed to be within 5µm (0.0002") in production use.

The F201M10 Cartridge is a micro-workholding system for use in high precision, small diameter CNC turning applications which enables you to move more work to the sub spindle operations and reduce cycle time.

​The F201M10 Cartridge  is compatible with spindles that accept F20-201 collets including  DIN 136E,  Meister Swiss 136E, Schaublin F20 (76-201),  Southwick & Meister F20-201, KEB (MasWerks) MC20-201,  Hardinge F20-201 / 4709 collets.

Masa’s Cartridge and Collet assembly is designed to vector the chucking force directly over the holding surface.  This means that the chucking force can be reduced while at the same time the holding power is increased. This opens up the possibility of moving part operations to the sub-spindle and dramatically reducing cycle time.  20% ~ 40% cycle time reduction is commonly achieved.​

F201M10 Cartridge Features

• Solid extended nose, giving superior access for tooling and coolant, with minimal overhang.
• The cartridge's core diameter is a single piece construction that will maintain 5 µm/.0002" concentricity at the extended nose tip.
• Micrometer dial control of collet clamping pressure regardless of the machines hydraulic or pneumatic collet closing force with the use of our Micrograd™ Wrench. Ideally suited for small diameter part size range from .2mm/.008" to 10mm/.3934" diameter
• 2-days shipping on all cartridges and collets​.
  

OCEANSIDE, CA.  Masa Tool has expanded their line of Microconic over-grip collets to include a new style called a "T-type."  The T-type over-grip collet has a longer gripping surface than the original W-type. We designed it specifically for longer parts such as bone screws with wide pitch threads.

Typically with over-gripping applications, a shorter land length/clamping pad length/grip length is desired because of limited space available to hold the workpiece behind the enlarged head or flange that it is reaching over. That is what our original W-type collet was optimized for.

However, with longer parts, with more surface area for clamping and gripping room, a longer land length is often preferred to provide more stability to support the longer length workpiece.