Cutting tool representatives are eager to discuss both new toolholders and common toolholding mistakes.

“The biggest thing we find, especially with lathe tools, people are over-torquing the clamping screws on the holders. And this is probably the number one issue that we see… we’ve all seen shops where people have some kind of Allen key or wrench. And they put a pipe on the end of that and that’s how they clamp the insert in. So they’re putting way too much clamping pressure on the insert and when the insert is in the cut this will create fractures and eventually the insert will fail.

“So the biggest thing that we tell people is, use the keys provided with the toolholder because they are designed so they are not able to over torque clamping screws,” says Steve Geisel, senior product manager at Iscar Canada.

“Another thing I see — I wouldn’t say on a daily basis, but I definitely see it — is when end-users load the tool into the turret [and] leave a couple inches hanging out of the turret. If you’re doing an interrupted cut, that’s not good. You want that tool as far into the turret as possible, with little overhang,” adds Alex Livingston, product manager at Tungaloy Canada in Brantford, Ontario.

Barry Schwartz, vice-president of Canadian sales at Sowa Tool & Machine based in Kitchener, Ontario, recalls a conversation with a machine tool dealer about toolholder contamination: “I asked him, ‘Can you put a conventional CAT-40 tool and a dual contact [toolholder] in the same spindle?’ He said yes, but you have to be careful. He said you should use one or the other. If you put a standard toolholder into the machine, you might get contamination—dirt, chips, coolant on top of the flange.

“If you put your dual contact toolholder in there, it jams that dirt in. That’s not good for the spindle, not good for the tool, not good for tolerances.”

Sometimes machinists try to use the same toolholder for multiple applications, says Scott Irie, product manager at Lyndex-Nikken.

“[They] think just because something worked in one application it’s going to work for everything else… however, when you start getting into the more high-performance equipment, you want to find the proper cutting tool and the toolholder that matches the caliber of that equipment. Unfortunately, people don’t necessarily make the connection and say, ‘I need to upgrade my entire assembly [not just] one component of it’,” says Irie.

Toolholders are also sometimes treated as an afterthought.

“You have a million dollar machine, the best state-of-the-art milling cutter touching the material, but in between some people think, ‘I’ll spend five dollars on my holder’,” says Mike Smith, product manager, reaming and EPB, at Seco Tools, LLC, based in Troy, Michigan.

Such mistakes tend not to occur with larger companies who “have a level of expertise and knowledge where they recognize there’s a very synergistic effect… when buying a new machine, you also have to incorporate the latest toolholding technology, along with the latest cutting tool technology. It’s a whole process to get the end result you’re trying to achieve, which is reducing costs after productivity increases. However, smaller companies that don’t have the [same] resources, lean towards [getting] the new machine tool with all the bells and whistles, but then they’ll continue to use the older holder systems they have in place,” says Mark Hatch, product director at Emuge.

“Holders are as critical as the tool to ensure the success of the machining process, but are often overlooked. A holder which cannot achieve the required precision, rigidity or concentricity will negatively impact the tool—hampering it from achieving its peak performance … a toolholder deserves the same level of care and attention as the tool itself,” says Stephanie Goudreau, director of marketing and business development at Komet of America.