ATC spindle with iso30/bt30 or hsk63f

One advantage of BT30 is that it is easy to make your own tooling.

But given that that is the only advantage that I can think of, HSK is probably the way to go.

I have BT30 on my milling machine, and like it, but I am not commercial so DIY tooling and cheap second-hand tooling is an advantage to me irrelevant to you.

This chap uses HSK on his lathe (both on the machine spindle _and_ the toolpost) because it is very repeatable.

Stephanisk wrote:

What do you mean with making your own tooling?

Just that. I recently made a 1.25" horizontal arbor for my mill with a 30INT shank.

I have also made sockets to mount the BT30 holders in my lathe and milling machine 4th axis for holding small work.

And made shanks to hold my probe.

It's not important for many users, but you can make BT / INT tooling with just a lathe.

[1] I have a universal mill with horizontal and vertical spindles. The vertical spindle uses either BT30 or SK30-with-the-wrong-pull-stud but the horizontal is still 30INT as originally supplied. I made a BT30 pneumatic drawbar for the vertical spindle, but did not convert the

Stephanisk wrote:

Interesting. Cool to make your own tooling.

I am still trying to find the necessary money to buy the HSK spindle. The toolholders are also more expensive so the while thing comes out 2000 USD higher than the bt30. I don't know if I can, but as most say the HSK is most future proof and specifically made for high speed spindles.

If it's hard, then the question has to be whether HSK is better _enough_ to be worth the extra. It's certainly objectively a bit better, but is that improvement enough to make it worth the expense _now_? BT30 works, after all. They wouldn't even make the spindles if it was a terrible idea.

Stephanisk wrote:

But as many said bt30 or ISO30 seem to be quite the same in performance and torque power.

ISO30 seems to be BT30 with a different pull stud?

SK30 is a (German?) variant of BT30. It adds a notch to the holder and makes one dog shorter.

All the "30" tapers are identical in the taper. 7/24 taper and common large-end diameter.
The differences are in the drawbar / pull stud and the drive dogs.

kris321 wrote:

the price with encoder and vfd is 2500 USD.

For what? Any pictures or links ?