Matt Saccomanno, the Co-Founder of Masa Tool and inventor of the Microconic Workholding sytem will talking about process innovations in the metalcutting manufacturing industry during the International Manufacturing Technology Show, IMTS, in September at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. 

Swiss-type CNC machines have gained in capability and demand as the machined components they produce are trending toward higher precision and micro-sized features. As the machines have become more sophisticated, the underlying basics of workholding remained unchanged until recently.

​This presentation is an overview of new developments as well as traditional approaches with relevance to today’s highly capable sliding headstock “Swiss-type” CNC turning centers. The goal is to summarize best-practices for optimizing use of both main and sub-spindle to maximize productivity and overall equipment effectiveness. The material presented is useful for machinists, CNC programmers, tool crib personnel, manufacturing engineers, estimators, and hands-on managers.

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Metal Cutting Corporation was founded in 1967 and moved to their current 52,000 square foot manufacturing facility in 1998. In 2008 they expanded their existing machine shop capabilities with Haas and subsequently Citizen turning equipment, allowing them to offer multi-axis CNC milling, lathe and automatic Swiss style machining up to 7 axes.

Their specialty has always been small diameter parts made from all metals.

"The parts can be long but are most often short, often very short."

When the company started in the late 1960's they  primarily worked with non-ferrous metals, especially tungsten and molybdenum. So much so that  in 1984 they became the exclusive North American distributor for Nippon Tungsten Co., Ltd.’s tungsten and molybdenum products. Since  the the 1980's they have been working with and machining more stainless steel and now have a developed a deep knowledge of machining the newer nickel and titanium based alloys.

Over the past several months Rich has been able to apply the Microcnic system to several other products that they make in their Citizen Machines.

Please extend a welcome to Clark Manufacturer's Service  as the newest members our Microconic team!

OCEANSIDE, CA - Masa Tool is very pleased to announce that Clark Manufacturer's Service has joined our Masa Team in April  2018.  They will be our representative agency partner in the Northwestern US managing the states of Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington. 

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​.
  

Set ups are quicker and more repeatable with Microconic™. You can document the micrometer-adjust collet closure in your set up plan so it's done the same every time, regardless of operator skill and without relying on "feel". ​

CEOCFO:
Mr. Saccomanno, what is the idea at Masa Tool, Inc?  What is your Microconic
Workholding System

Mr. Saccomanno:
Masa Tool is basically formed from our life experience in the machining of micro-precision parts; primarily on Swiss-type screw machines, although the real focus is for high precision small parts manufacturing on any machine type
to better the world of micro machining. Specifically, our first major product release is the Microconic line,

as you mentioned. Microconic is a high precision, collet-type workholding system that fits in conventional machine tools of all types. It provides extremely precise, extremely rigid and also very easy to use workholding for the manufacturing of micro precision products.

CEOCFO:
What are you replacing or enhancing? What are people doing now?

Mr. Saccomanno:
We are replacing an existing collet design. A collet is a traditional workholding device. It is like a split sleeve that has a taper on it and it slides into another tapered receptacle. It clamps down on the work piece and traditionally has been the most precise and rigid way to hold small work pieces for production machining. The most widely
used collet system design was invented about a hundred years ago. It has essentially been used to this day with very little improvement until now. The Microconic system was created to resolve many of the limitations of existing legacy systems.

The neat thing about Microconic is that we fit directly into the existing legacy workholding system, so that it is an
advanced, self contained workholding unit that fits within what is already in the machine. Therefore, the costumer does not have to modify their machine or anything. They can install our product right inside their existing spindle. Then we provide improved accuracy, repeatability, adjustability, consistency, rigidity and everything in every way. There are quite a few different ways that we improved the state of the art.

CEOCFO:
Have manufacturers been looking for a better way or is it once they find Microconic they are excited?

Mr. Saccomanno:
That is a great question! There is excitement when they see what we have, but it is not an easy sell at first. That is because, as you say, it is hard to look for something that you do not know exists. That has been a big part of our marketing hurdle to get over; to distinguish ourselves from the systems that are out there. To answer your question it is both a yes and a no answer. Yes, people have been looking for something else. There are pervasive complaints
throughout the industry about the quality of existing systems and the availability and the consistency. Those are just like part of the landscape. They have been around for years.

Everyone is kind of used to dealing with it and they are always trying to find better sources to get better collets and things like that. On the flip side, because people are so used to dealing with that, they do not really anticipate the revolutionary change that you can get by all of the benefits of the Microconic system. Therefore, it takes a skilled technical person to really talk to the customers specifically about what they can do with their own applications. The cost of Microconic is not trivial, so it is important to show how the value is created by providing capabilities to significantly improve productivity over what can be done with traditional legacy 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.

Due to the extreme opening capability of our overgrip collets , workpiece ejection must be very reliable to prevent a part from becoming stuck in the slots of the collet. ​Therefore we have developed  the Microguide™ ejection guide sleeve to prevent parts from falling inside the collet instead of ejecting into the part catcher.  ​

State-of-the-art LFV is a widely applicable cutting technology designed to avoid the problem of spiraling chips, entanglement of chips and built-up edges. Benefits include increased cutting tool life, reduced heat generation and reduced power consumption. 
​
The popular Citizen CINCOM L20 series sliding headstock lathes are now available with Low Frequency Vibration (LFV). 

This widely applicable cutting technology – able to handle a broad range of machining shapes and materials – is ideal for cutting difficult-to-cut materials.  The state-of-the-art LFV suppresses various risks associated with these materials, such as entanglement of chips and built-up edges.

Depending on the material being cut, a variety of problems can be caused by chips getting entangled with each other, including increased cutting resistance, scarring, changes in the texture of the machined surface, tool nose damage, and built-up edges due to cutting heat.  In LFV cutting, “air cutting” time prevents the machining temperature from rising, which both prolongs tool lives and gives relief from various problems caused by chips.