The B200 Series chuck and its close cousin the large through-hole BB200 Series have been the industry standard on many lathes for decades. These series of chucks have been around for so long it has proven that the design was truly reliable and has remained the bench mark within the chucking industry.
Kitagawa have been busy developing a revolutionary new chuck - called the BR Series - taking years to conduct testing, refining and retesting the design to ensure that when it came to market then it would truly be a revolution - in the chucking industry anyhow!
Many manufacturers claim that their standard chuck is ‘high accuracy’ but none can surpass or match the accuracy of the BR Series. The industry standard repeatability of a three jaw wedge chuck with a set of formed jaws (where the jaws are turned to match the diameter of the workpiece) was 20 microns between actuations (opening and closing of the chuck on the workpiece). The BR Series has increased this accuracy to below 10 microns as a standard - no matter if your gripping with a 6” (170mm) Chuck or a 12” (315mm) Chuck. This degree of accuracy makes the requirement for many specialist chucks obsolete as the BR Series can accomplish the accuracy required as a standard specification.
BR Series chucks come with a range of improved specifications as well, naturally they all feature an extra large through-hole (the same as the BB200 Series) as standard and intelligent design has enabled the jaw lift to be significantly reduced. This increases suitability for workpiece transfer from main-spindle to sub-spindle. The gripping force of the chuck at maximum speeds has improved by 10-15% showing less grip-force ‘fall-off’ by centrifugal forces, this is due to a redesigned and patented master base jaw.
The overall appearance of the BR Series is different from other Kitagawa chucks with a rounded bevel on the edge of the chuck and with a coloured Kitagawa ‘K’ Stud on the face, so if anyone is visiting your production plant and understands the industry they will know if you have this chuck on your machine you are capable of machining to a extremely high degree of accuracy. Every chuck will include a QR code on the side to allow you to pull all the necessary data about that chuck directly from the chuck!
Naturally the machine spindle interface of the BR Series is common with the B200, BB200, QJR Series and many other Kitagawa chucks and therefore is interchangeable. So you will not require additional cylinders, draw-tubes, adaptors and connectors when replacing your old Kitagawa chuck. Of course we can supply the various adaptors and connectors so that the BR Series chuck can also be installed on almost any lathe if necessary.
If the ultimate accuracy is required and further costs need to be saved then you can purchase a special set of patented T-Nuts we call ‘Tnut-Plus’. These T-nuts allow you to remove a set of formed soft jaws (Kitagawa Soft Jaws) and replace them with another set of formed soft jaws (Kitagawa Soft Jaws) and still maintain a repeatability of under 10 microns. This means that you only have to form a set of soft jaws once therefore saving you time not having to form jaws every time per jaw change to find accuracy.
For accurate, disciplined machinists this means the hours you save forming jaws per year is significant. Use the example of three chuck set-up changes per day and the forming of the jaws takes about 30 minutes then you are saving 1.5hrs a day of machining time which works out at approximately €14,000 per year - which is considerable saving and much more than the purchase price of the chuck - including with the special Tnut-Plus!
Kitagawa can only guarantee this degree of accuracy if you purchase original Kitagawa soft jaws as Kitagawa can only ensure that their soft jaws are manufactured to the same tolerance as the BR Series Chuck.
The built in stability and accuracy of this chuck with Tnut-Plus also means that if the customer requires specialist top tooling for the gripping of irregular workpieces then the design of the top tooling can be simplified allowing you to use single-piece top jaws (mono-block) instead of complex base jaw and jaw insert combinations.
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