On 2010-08-16, Joe AutoDrill wrote:
What qualities does the hex shank add to this process? I'd love to
understand the
reasoning behind this.

Hex shanks are nice for gripping in standard drill chucks,
because they grip on flats, and thus avoid slipping.

The customer is buying a higher-end multiple spindle head product I offer
with ER style collets on somewhere around 2" C-C spacing.

[ ... ]

The tooling he uses is similar to a hole saw you would run in a hand drill
but made for higer end work by Milwaukee. He does not want to go to custom
tooling and this tooling happens to be made specifically for key-type
chucks.

Key-type chucks have a drawback in that dust, wood debris or even small
chips can get in past the jaws and into the internals and ruin them over
time. The ER style collets fix that problem for the customer but create the
next problem which is what I am trying to solve here.

The hex shank qualties added are inexpensive and readily available toolign
that is tried and tested industry-wide by others.

Hmm ... perhaps you need someone with a EDM to make hex holes in
the round ones in the ER collets.

Make sure to align the corners of the hex with the front slots
of the collets -- though this will still mean that the rear slots will
be on the flats. (Assuming that the size you use has six front slots and
six back ones. I'm upstairs, and my ER-25 collets are downstairs, so I
don't know for sure.)

Good Luck,
DoN.

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