REGO-FIX founder Fritz Weber grew up as the oldest child in a large family that lived in the Land of Precision, the watchmaking area of western Switzerland known as the Jura Arc. At a young age, he began to experiment with tool making on the lathe in his grandfather’s attic workshop. On one of his first forays into toolholding, he built an easy-release collet that clamped a mop head onto its stick. He also created toolholding devices for cheese-making and milk-bottling machines.
Although Weber’s early inventions didn’t reach the micron levels of accuracy that today’s machine tools require, they focused on accurate, firm toolholding – and they turned Weber’s attention to the collets used in machining. As the Jura area was known for watch making, Weber had the opportunity to hire many fine-precision watchmaking engineers through the years for his growing company, and assigned them to design collets and fixturing systems for clients.
Early manual machine tools ran at slow speeds with shallow depths of cut. When Fritz Weber entered the toolholding industry, the E collet was a dominant design in the machining industry. It used a 30° top taper and an 8° back taper, fit into a holder and cap with matching tapers, and tightened down very accurately–so much so that operators often needed to hammer the back of a toolholder to remove the tool.
The repeatability of other options, including the DA or double-angle collet and the TG collet, varied wildly. With no published standards, toolholding manufacturers reverse engineered specifications from existing products. The Weldon flat, originally developed in the early 20th century, took advantage of a flat-sided tool shank to apply pressure via a set screw and secure the tool in the collet. Although this design provided substantial pull-out prevention, it pushed the tool off center, which led to runout.
To overcome that problem, Weber and his engineers developed a design with a groove that mated with the clamping nut, so the act of removing the nut would pull the tool out of the holder. This design came in a wide range of sizes, and offered great toolholding accuracy, security and repeatability. The name of the new product added the “R” for REGO-FIX to the existing “E” designation.
The popularity of the ER system exploded because of its repeatability and precision. Eventually, one of REGO-FIX’s European automaker customers pointed out that REGO-FIX couldn’t expand enough to supply every company that wanted to use its system. Instead, the customer suggested that REGO-FIX let its ER patent expire so the design could become a DIN standard. With the customer’s assistance, ER became DIN 6499, transformed into a global benchmark. Now other companies could create interchangeably compatible collets based on a shared set of tightly specified criteria.
ER grew to become the world’s most widely adopted collet option, although not every collet labeled as “ER” demonstrated REGO-FIX’s exacting fidelity to the DIN standard. In fact, REGO-FIX continued to tighten the bands on all ER tolerances even further. The company also expanded the ER system with mini-nut options, ER adapters, floating collets holders, along with products for lathes and Swiss CNC machines, as well as for other applications, including tapping, drilling, milling and reaming.
In the late 1990s, as machining speeds climbed and part standards grew even more demanding, some customers began to look for greater accuracy and better, faster clamping than even the ER system could deliver. That quest spawned the development of new designs, including hydraulic and heat-shrink holders. Hydraulic toolholding uses an oil-filled bladder that applies increasing pressure to the tool shank as the operator tightens a set screw. Heat-shrink systems expand the holder slightly through a heating process, creating a grip that tightens as the holder cools.
Instead of following other companies into hydraulic or heat-shrink designs, REGO-FIX innovated a press-fit solution that became today’s powRgrip system. The big advantages of the design – its simplicity, extreme accuracy, and lack of reliance on oil or heat-driven clamping – dramatically prolonged tool and toolholder life.
The first design concepts for powRgrip originated as the head of the company and a group of engineers brainstormed a drawing on a napkin. When REGO-FIX demonstrated a rough powRgrip prototype at an EMO show in Europe, customer interest prompted the development of the system in earnest. At IMTS 2002, powRgrip became the talk of the exhibit hall, with crowds thronging to see it in action.
The history of REGO-FIX as a company demonstrates the power of creative thinking, a willingness to explore ideas that form the basis of improved concepts, and an unyielding commitment to building the best, most-accurate toolholding options the manufacturing industry can find. As part of a culture of excellence, REGO-FIX constantly is hard at work expanding existing innovations and adding new ideas to them, always looking for ways to enhance machining results for manufacturers.