European-Style Collets, Feed Fingers More Readily Available, Shipped Faster

Hardinge Inc., Elmira, NY, continues to expand their line of European-style collets to meet the increased demand from multi-spindle machine owners in North America. Hardinge manufactures and inventories solid collets, master collets and pads, solid feed fingers, and master feed fingers and pads.

They fully support Euroturn, Gildemeister, Index, and Schütte machines with 24-hour shipping of standard fractional and whole metric sizes. Decimal sizes and products for other brands of machines will be available within a five- to seven-day delivery.

Hardinge offers a semi-finished blank program for pick-off burring collets and special-shape collets for fast turnaround.

"Hardinge will strive to be the supplier of choice for collets, feed fingers, and pick-off collets for the automatic multi-spindle machines," states Cal Macomber, director of sales and marketing for Hardinge Workholding Group.

Match Collet to Bar Stock

If you use inch bar stock, you should use fractional collets – NOT metric. Very few metric sizes have a direct fractional equivalent. Metric collets for metric bar stock, fractional collets for inch bar stock, and decimal collets for decimal bar stock will provide the best results.

Match the collet size (order hole) exactly to the workpiece or bar stock diameter. If you are using ¼" bar stock with a 6mm collet, you could get push-back, chatter or poor concentricity because the collet is smaller than the bar stock.

The majority of operators don't realize the ramifications of such a small variance in diameter. If the collet order hole is larger than the workpiece or bar stock, the part may pivot at the line of contact at the face of the collet. If the collet order hole is smaller than the workpiece or bar stock, the edges of the slots will bite into the workpiece and may cause damage or mark the bar.

A sampling of the range of collets Hardinge has available, in stock for quicker delivery.

When the collet is the proper size for the workpiece or bar stock, there is a full bearing along the angle and the circumference of each segment of the collet where they mate with the spindle angle.

Use exact finished stock whenever possible to increase your productivity and profitability. By using exact finished stock, you will decrease cycle time because you have less material to remove and you also have fewer chips to manage. You will also require less tooling – having eliminated the roughing and finishing tools. Cost studies have proven substantial savings when switching to exact finish bar stock when the job permits.

Filling a Need

In the past, very few North American collet manufacturers carried fractional European-style collets. In addition, fractional collets generally come with a long delivery time from their European manufacturers.

Hardinge, in response to customer requests, is now manufacturing and stocking many popular European-style collets in their NY-headquarters. Having produced multi-spindle special orders since the 1960s, as well as stocking a limited range of European-style collets for the past 25 years, Hardinge is now filling their shelves with more styles and sizes.