I’m genuinely excited to announce the latest accessory from Carbide 3D.
The Crush IT Clamps. These will be the last set of clamps you buy. Why, you ask? They are brilliant. We’ve spent over a year refining and working on these to ensure they outperform anything else.
We took a step back and worked backward from the hybrid table. We thought about everything we know, love, and hate about clamps, and made them feature-packed to be our best yet.
They are stacked with features including:
Being molded from glass-filled nylon
They are magnetically loaded, Making removal of projects quick and easy.
Re-Enforced with stainless steel hardware
Each set comes with a set of interchangeable flat and serrated jaws
And much, much more…
Kevin will be doing a video shortly to give these a proper introduction…
That’s not all…
With every set of Crush IT Essentials - we’ve included a new Nutz N’ Boltz kit.
This is a handy selection of hardware and a caddy to hold it all.
My vote is that this is what comes with Shapeoko 5 Pro machines.
I originally didn’t like the idea of the plastic clamps. But they’ve been durable enough that they are what I use 90% of the time even with aluminum and steel ones at my disposal. I’ve mowed a few down and they are inexpensive enough that I don’t cry, and my endmills thank y’all.
But I will mention that I have bought a fair amount of the Essentials/Tigers/Gators on my own dime. Honestly they are all fair priced for the feature set, but the Essentials have become a favorite of mine and are so far on the bang-for-the-buck scale that I have a lot of them. I literally have 7 FDM 3D printers at my disposal to print clamps if I want, but I almost always buy the Essentials. I have even had one job using customer provided material that was really expensive. They ordered the minimum size to make the part, so I programmed to just cut thru the clamps. The cost of the clamps was far less than the cost of the extra material I would usually allow for workholding.
I read that as “Magically” loaded not magnetically loaded
So do they apply clamping pressure due to the ramp as you screw them down? (I really need to dig my computer glasses out of the pile on my desk)
Correct, the clamping pressure comes from the two ramps, the retraction when you remove the part comes from the magnets pushing the two pieces apart. If you run a lot of repeat work and want a trouble free change over, this should be a win.
These clamps are suitable for use on any machine with a Hybrid table, but can also be used on other machines such as the Nomad or Shapeoko 3 if you have a suitable fixture to screw them down to.
So they should work if you have a T-track or M6 or 1/4"-20 threaded inserts (EDIT: As noted below there should be enough room for 1/4" hardware to fit, but I doubt we would ever do an Imperial version of the Crush-It Nutz ’n’ Bolts tray or T-Nuts).
I have even had one job using customer provided material that was really expensive. They ordered the minimum size to make the part, so I programmed to just cut thru the clamps. The cost of the clamps was far less than the cost of the extra material I would usually allow for workholding.