Machine tool specialist has a diverse range of high-performance Swiss automatic lathe workholding products - headstock collets, pickoff collets, carbide guide bushings and bar loader collets.

Keeping bar stock unmarked, holding small diameter bar stock on centre, holding thin-wall parts, ejecting parts and working with extruded bar shapes etc are all common workholding issues facing manufacturers of high-precision Swiss -turned parts. Market-leading machine tool and workholding specialist - Hardinge-Bridgeport - renowned worldwide for its Super-Precision technology solutions - has a diverse range of high-performance products (headstock collets, pickoff collets, carbide guide bushings and bar loader collets) - designed to overcome these problems - enabling customers achieve high accuracy and repeatability when machining small diameter parts for the medical and aerospace sectors. * Guide bushings - stringent quality approvals and in-depth performance checks on manufactured aerospace and medical parts - means that there is little room for error.

Marked or scuffed components which can affect part accuracy, surface finish, and surface integrity put demands on precision manufacturer's machine tools - and their workholding equipment.

Hardinge-Bridgeport's range of guide bushing solutions ensure the elimination of scrapped and sub-standard parts - which in turn helps manufacturers maintain productivity, better meet delivery times and control costs.

Hardinge-Bridgeport's guide bushings have a carbide lining to ensure that parts remain clean and unmarked.

Even for stock material that is not compatible with Carbide - Hardinge-Bridgeport has 'specially-designed and manufactured' solutions and provides bushings available in hardened steel or with Meehanite-linings.

Such be-spoke solutions also extend to bushings for D-shaped and extruded stock material too.

* Headstock and emergency collets - Hardinge-Bridgeport has designed a comprehensive range of extended-nose headstock collets to give customers extra flexibility and improved performance.

The collets feature increased nose length (flat or tapered) to enable pickoff work and/or to compensate for tooling interference.

And, like all Hardinge-Bridgeport collets - rigorous quality and accuracy checks and inspections (concentricity, run-out accuracy etc) are performed on each collet to make sure they are up to the job Sometimes when precision manufacturers don't have the right size collets in stock - an 'emergency' solution is required.

Hardinge-Bridgeport's 'Emergency' collets provide the answer.

They can be machined to the desired bore size by a customer and can be used to achieve small production runs until the standard collet arrives.

* Holding bar stock on centre - as every precision engineer knows - holding small diameter bar stock (more and more a requirement today for aerospace and medical component manufacture) is difficult to keep on centre - and, as a consequence, the ability to maintain part accuracy can be a casualty.

To help Hardinge-Bridgeport has designed a bushing that fits in the back end of a headstock collet that ensures reliable and repeatable on-centre feeding of bar stock.

This provision eliminates the problem of small diameter stock accidentally pushing through a slot and part quality being compromised.

* Pick-off collets - Hardinge-Bridgeport's ID gripping (custom expanding) pickoff collets are the solution for secure and safe holding of parts with delicate outside threads or thin walls - and can significantly reduce (even eliminate) the additional time and cost involved with secondary operations.

Hardinge-Bridgeport's collets have a built-in spring ejector that allows each part to drop into a basket or a conveyor - thereby automating production and increasing productivity.

Hardinge-Bridgeport has designed pickoff collets to be compatible with a number of machine tool manufacturer's machines - Citizen, Star, Tornos Deco, Tsugami, etc Hardinge-Bridgeport also designs and manufactures other high-performance 'special' Swiss-application collets that include stepped, tapered, chamfered, radius and off-center order, and over-the-shoulder options.

Said David Andrew, sales and marketing director at Hardinge-Bridgeport said: 'The business opportunities that exist for precision engineering companies in the aerospace and medical sectors - can only really be fully exploited if these companies have the very best technologies in place - and that quite clearly includes quality workholding equipment.