R8 Tooling for Warco Super Major Mill

Good choice when you use cutters up to 12mm. My reasoning was slightly different when I chose er25 over er32, simply the cost of cutters over 16mm gets very high. For larger sizes using R8 collets, the straight shanked 12, 14, 16 and 20mm with APHT or APMT inserts are economic to use and do not overshadow the work like a collet can. APT sell this type.

For Milling Only then a smaller ER size is quite possibly a better choice but many look at the overall picture and go with ER 32 as they have a better range when it comes to work holding both on the mill in say ER blocks and on the lathe in a flange mount chuck. So one set of collets does all rather than having ER20, R8 for larger mill use and something else for the lathe.

Looking at the bigger picture I use ER20 on both my R8 taper mills for cutters, although not that often. Everyday milling is done with 6mm and 10mm endmills in sidelock holders. i've never used ER collets for work holding; I use Burnerd EC collets on the lathe.

Andrew

I don't use my sidelocks that much but useful sometimes with the smaller cutters.

On the X3 with it's MT3 spindle I tend to mostly use ER32 but do have a ER16, a few MT collets and a few sidelock.

The SX2.7 tends to mostly be used with the ER25 on R8 that came with it plus the odd sidelock

KX3 is almost all done with an R8 ER16.

As for work holding on the lathe I was about to but an ER32 chuck for that but got a 5C chuck at a very good price so tend to use that, the %c collets also fit the Spin Indexer so hold most of my round work on the mill as well. Both have %C to ER32 for those odd sizes that I don't have 5C to fit. With both ER32 & 25 collet blocks I also don't suffer from the problem of wanting to hold work that is the same diameter as the tool shank I want to cut it with.

Had a SX2P Sieg 3MT, now a GH Universal Warco R8. Have stuck with er25, some 3MT shanks I turned down to fit 18 or 20mm R8 holders. As other have said small er size is adequate for most slotting and small tool work, you may want a dedicated holder for larger diameter tools. When I used to work Bridgeports mostly used a Clarkson holder and only switched for facing work. Using a straight 18/20/ 3/4” allows you to create a tooling system like Tormech system.

I like the idea of having a small tooling system, I've ordered the ER20 short straight shank holder form APT in the UK, I'll have a quality R8 20mm collet for holding in the spindle and then buy a few more or the ER20 holders so I can have all my end mills that I'll be using for that particular job set up in there holders with the offsets programmed into the DRO for quick changing during jobs.

I did look at the Tormach TTS, holders but the price of each holder a too expensive compared to APT's prices. and with APT I know there tooling is great quality and an affordable price..

If you are going down that route then the Tormach R8 collet would be the best choice as it will pull your plain shank items upto the fixed end of the spindle rather than depend on how tightly you draw a standard R8 collet into the spindle. Though I suppose if tightened with a torque wrench on the draw bar you should get reasonably consistant tool heights, That's assuming no internal fillet where 20mm shank meets ER body so chuck can but up to R8 collet