UNIQUE SOLUTIONS
June 26, 2018
LIGHT WEIGHT AIR CHUCK
This is a 350mm or 14" precision air chuck with three jaws and 3mm jaw stroke.
A customer approached PML-PAL engineering with a request to design a large air chuck for turning application that is going to clamp a large work piece, over 1000mm or 39". The customer asked to consider the heavy load on the spindle. He asked to design a chuck that would be as light as possible. The chuck has to be designed to hold its accuracy and repeatability for the long term as well as run at certain rpm.
Considering the light weight request, the conclusion by pml-pal was to design a chuck body made from Aluminum material that goes through anodizing process. The moving parts are inserts made of gray cast iron and inner jaws made from hardened carbon steel. The aluminum chuck weight is roughly 30kg/66lb. It is about 43% percent or 23 kg/50lb lighter than a similar chuck made of mild steel. Accuracy is 0.006mm or 0.00024".
To read more about the manufacturing process, please review the following page.
Below is a link to an article about one of PML-PAL customer on how they retrofitted a Puma lathe for their unique specification. Among the many changes, they mounted the above air chuck.
From the original article published on June 7th, 2013....
“It was through such discussions that we determined that our needs would be best met by
replacing the Puma’s hydraulic chuck and draw bar with a high precision, low pressure
(PML-PAL) 350mm 3-jaw pneumatic chuck system. To ensure quicker set-ups and improved
productivity a bespoke work holding system was developed using the flexible Jergens Ball-Lock
fixturing system, these are used on the modular custom chuck jaws designed and manufactured
in house by Cross".
The PML-PAL light air chuck, 350mm, is mounted on the Puma Lathe
