"Today's machining market will continue to grow in complexity and will demand versatility in your operations and in your machine tools. This necessitates that your workholding follow suit. Speedgrip, a 74-year-old American manufacturer of precision workholding, can help you with that," said Doug Brannies, Speedgrip Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
"Most people still operate under the assumption that I.D. workholding must be completely custom," continued Brannies. "That is no longer the case with the Sabertooth line from Speedgrip. Sabertooth gives you the advantages and precision of a custom system with the versatility and availability of an off-the-shelf system."
Sabertooth is available for holding internal diameters from 0.500" up to 8.5". The Sabertooth line can be employed across a wide variety of machine tools and features solutions for turning, milling, various types of grinders, 4th and 5th axis milling, hybrid mill/turns, EDM, gear manufacturing, balancing machines and more.
"Sabertooth gives you the ability to have a parallel expanding I.D. collet that allows you to use it with short parts on either end of the collet, in the middle or even stack multiple parts on the collet. Of course, full length parts work as well," said Brannies. Using two sleeves at once is an off-the-shelf option with the purchase of a double sleeve mandrel. For extra-long parts, mandrels for holding more than two sleeves are available as a custom option.
"Due to Sabertooth's unique design, the collet is fully supported for the entire length and expands evenly across the entire length," said Brannies. "This is a major difference from systems that either offer a single taper on one end for expansion-producing a single line of contact-or a double taper that expands on each end but is not supported or expanded in the middle. This gives the Sabertooth a significant advantage when customers require a flexible and versatile I.D. system to use with a wide variety of parts. Sabertooth's design also protects it from over expansion without the need for retainer rings or travel-limiting part stops common with other designs. The fully supported design also prevents uneven wearing of the system, ensuring long term accuracy."
Brannies noted that another common issue shops have is choosing between dead length or pull-back functionality. "With the Sabertooth collet installed in one direction, it operates in a traditional pull-back function; flip it around and it operates in a dead length function," he said. "It uses one sleeve and one mandrel, allowing customers to switch back and forth at any time without any additional parts."
According to Brannies, Sabertooth works well with many types of parts, including one of the toughest applications: thin-wall parts. "With full length support across the entire collet, and with no over-expansion to worry about, it is perfect for thin walls or other parts that can be deformed by double angle or single angle mandrel systems," he said.
Speedgrip also offers custom Sabertooth I.D. collet options, including sealed slots, multiple diameters, chamfered nose, radius nose, splined and more as needed.
Sabertooth collets are available in a variety of custom collet coatings, including but not limited to carbide, copper, urethane, titanium nitride and chrome.
For holding the Sabertooth collets there is a wide assortment of off-the-shelf mandrels and actuation methods. Nine stock mandrel sizes cover all of the Sabertooth collets from 0.500" to 8.5". These are available in draw bolt style for automated actuation and nut actuated style for manual clamping. The draw bolt style mandrels can be actuated with a customer's existing drawtube and actuator or with one of Speedgrip's self-contained actuators. A variety of mounting options are available including adjustable mount for "A" style spindles from A3 through A15. Custom mount options are available.
Speedgrip can provide customers with the information to make their own part locators or can make custom locators to meet customers' application requirements with a variety of options including "air sense" part presence detection.
For more information contact:
Doug Brannies
Speedgrip Chuck Co.
2000 Industrial Pkwy.
Elkhart, IN 46516
574-294-1506
dbrannies@speedgrip.com
www.speedgrip.com