Swiss-Type Hydraulic Chucks Clamp in Three Turns

Big Kaiser introduces hydraulic chucks for Swiss-type lathes, said to be the first Swiss-type tooling improvement offered by the company for in more than 30 years. These toolholders use a single wrench, enabling quick change of the cutting tools on a gang slide.

Often used for mass production of small items such as automobile parts, watch parts, medical parts, communication and digital equipment parts, Swiss-type lathes have many fixed and rotating tools operating in a narrow space, making it difficult to replace a cutting tool inside the machine. To minimize machine downtime and increase operator safety, the hydraulic chucks use a hex wrench that requires only 2 or 3 turns for both clamping and unclamping. 

To maintain good repeatability, once a hydraulic chuck is centered, the runout does not vary, even if a cutting tool is changed repeatedly, according to the company. Runout of less than 3 microns at 4×D can be achieved. With clamping ranging between 4 and 8 mm, the chuck promotes high-precision cutting. The company says that the chucks are long-lasting and that rigidity is improved by the short projection length and dual pressure points. The chucks have a standard pipe thread for coolant-through connection and are available for Citizen and Star machines with ¾" or 22 mm straight shank.