Actually I'd like to hear your experiences. I'll never own shrink fit tooling, hell the heating machines are $5k-70k!!,
But I'd like to learn about the process from machinests vs manufacturers.
There is place for the technology when certain objectives need to be met. Shrink tooling is ubiquitous now and requires in some cases merely a hand held heat gun. I’ve had 1/2 carbide endmills pull out of a shrink holder as well. It is great for high speed finishing where runout matters, contouring and light roughing with small diameters in high speed spindles.
Hydraulic chucks also are matching in accuracy but provide a bit more gripping power needed with larger diameter tools and roughing cutters.
Examples are Mould and Die shops, high speed finishing on a $1.5M mill the size of a garage working on a Mould the size of a car with 6mm ball nose endmills, eliminating the former hand finishing required a few decades ago.
Tool life matters, in these cases the holders and the tool are often balanced to optimize finish accuracy and extend tool life.
Speed , accuracy, reliability are protocols requiring such tooling, some other benefits are decreasing wear and stress on high speed spindles, especially those with ceramic bearings.
It’s dependent on the need and the results you are achieving. You might need to make cross holes in Ti-555 titanium using long carbide endmills to exacting tolerances to avoid honing. You may need to rough and finish the part on the same 5axis machine, because you now have 11 hours instead of 22, and zero tolerance for scrap. Every process and every tool has to be scrutinized and optimized.
The development of HSK and double contact spindles took the process further in stability, repeatability and accuracy. They are all incremental advantages that add up to substantial gains. These are not pushing the envelope, they are now common practice in industry where it is demanded.
Does every shop need to utilize the zenith of technology? Absolutely not.
If you are in highly competitive areas and your competition is adapting,you will have to consider it.
It’s never about one thing, it’s an holistic approach, the entire package. There is little to gain by using high balanced shrink fit tooling in a 40 taper machine expecting high volume metal removal rates that demand a 50 taper spindle for example. Just having an expensive, technically evolved holder or tool in a spindle doesn’t guarantee the results you are expecting, nor even make a scintilla of difference.
War stories: I worked with a customer on a major machining project, a difficult exacting job that was being off loaded to many different shops. Many tried and could not make money and kept offloading it to someone else. It went back to the original company who decided they could tackle it with a modest investment. Together we dialed in the processing, avoiding problem areas through the rough and finish stages. It required the right tool for every different process, and the correct method of applying it. Some very expensive cutting tools, some balanced tool holders ,some conventional but all together getting it done. There was a reliable process that took the part down to 7 hours vs the current 25 hours plus remedial finishing afterwards plus initial roughing and prep work-from another division. It was predicated on using a certain machine tool with a 50 Taper, which the customer was purchasing 2 of. The company president made the last minute decision to change that to a 40 taper because.. reasons, who knows. He was told the he did not need a 50 taper and saved thousands of dollars and cut delivery time.
Short story, it did not work, prompting a lot of cutting tool changes , slowing the operation down, blaming the machine manufacturer, the tooling companies etc.
6 months later, another company calls up saying they need some advice on doing a job from Company X. By coincidence, they had the exact same machine with a 50 taper. One week later, they received the original programs from company Xs engineering dept, plugged in the original tooling, turned out the parts on time, no issues.
There is no one size fits all, there is also a lot of BS to wade through.
Despite all this technology you can still lay out dowel pins and pockets on a die plate within a thou on a 50 year old XLO with high speed endmills, drills , reamers boring heads and a test indicator in a R8 spindle.