New CNC Lathes

[WolfLMM]

I am not a big Mazak fan either. Mazatrol sucks IMHO. The Mazaks we have are for dedicated use. Meaning they run either just one part or family of parts. Mazaks work nice for production because they are fast. I have ran Makino horizontals (a55) Very nice. The memory is rather small for complex stuff. The new Fanuc controls are not that impressive. I like the Mitsubishi controls the Mori uses better but that is just me. I learned milling on an old MV55 (Mean Green) tough old machines. If sombody makes a lathe that can truely keep up with the new Mori NL live lathes I would love to try it. We have had a bunch of different brands in on test, Daewoo, Kia, Okuma and some others with now real luck. Never tryed a Yama Seiki though. We tryed a Haas SL30. That had be the biggest flaming peice of junk I have ever ran. Burnt the drive motor out of it in three days.:rofl: The control sucks to. No hand dials for rapid , feed, and spindle overrides. :gay:

Thats exactly what our mazak's run a family of parts, little small caps that we make tens of thousands of each year. The linear machines are really fast, I dont know if mazak makes a machine with box ways?? Only problem is all the door latches are f'd on ours and the head pulls them open..causing the safety interlock to stop the machine.

I am only going on what the other shops told Dad and I. We ran our first piece on the large on today. Its not going to be a production machine. wE just needed a HD highly accurate lathe.

Haas:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

 

[McRat]

Yeah, but I already mooched off of you on the reducers that didn't pan out. Your work was excellent; my engineering was... uh... suckish?

So I wanted to spread my mooching around!

 

[JOHNBOY]

That is cool! Not like I have not mooched back!

 

[dmaxlover]

Looks Good.

We just got another set of Mori Seiki NL 2000s with live tooling and Y axis. There are awesome. Here is a link to where I work. Aint to shabby.:rofl: http://www.acutecprecision.com/fac-saegertown.html

Pretty fancy stuff John. The only problem I see is, in order to pay for all those machines, a crap load of parts have to be ran through them... Boring. I wish we at work could constitute spending the money on some really nice live tooling lathes, but being and R&D shop, it's just not justified.

I would say tho for only having 2 full time machinist including me, we have a ton of equipment. To be honest, I would take a good hard working chip boy over a new machine any day.

1 Daewoo Puma 230 lathe with manual chuck
1 Harrison Alpha 550 cnc engine lathe
1 Harrison Alpha 400 cnc engine lathe
1 Webb knee mill with prototrak 2 axis controls
1 Milltronics MB19 3 axis bed mill with 5th axis positioning
1 Milltronics MB24 3 axis bed mill with 4th axis postioning
1 Haas VF-3 with full 4th axis
1 Lodge and Shipley cnc engine lathe (early 80's vintage) with about a 50" swing

Manual machines include:
3 lathes
1 knee mill
1 horizontal bandsaw
1 vertical bandsaw

 

[JOHNBOY]

John that looks like a real good setup to me.
In the production areas we run tons of parts. Boring!

But Luckly I am in the precision end. I mainly mess with Y axis live lathes. It is amazing the stuff you can do with a Y axis live lathe. Want to drill a hole 1" center on the daimeter, mill and turn a cam in one shot. It rocks but man can F things up in a hurry. :rofl: Most of the stuff I do is prototype, one off aerospace or energy stuff. I do some production runs. I just finished a run of 600 Inconel 625 parts. My day dragged. But it pays the bills well.

 

[WolfLMM]

Pretty fancy stuff John. The only problem I see is, in order to pay for all those machines, a crap load of parts have to be ran through them... Boring. I wish we at work could constitute spending the money on some really nice live tooling lathes, but being and R&D shop, it's just not justified.

I would say tho for only having 2 full time machinist including me, we have a ton of equipment. To be honest, I would take a good hard working chip boy over a new machine any day.

1 Daewoo Puma 230 lathe with manual chuck
1 Harrison Alpha 550 cnc engine lathe
1 Harrison Alpha 400 cnc engine lathe
1 Webb knee mill with prototrak 2 axis controls
1 Milltronics MB19 3 axis bed mill with 5th axis positioning
1 Milltronics MB24 3 axis bed mill with 4th axis postioning
1 Haas VF-3 with full 4th axis
1 Lodge and Shipley cnc engine lathe (early 80's vintage) with about a 50" swing

Manual machines include:
3 lathes
1 knee mill
1 horizontal bandsaw
1 vertical bandsaw

Run full scale production 24hrs a day, the machines get paid for real fast. You have to find customers that are willing to pay for the work, that is where a lot of shops fail. We are a defense shop, BAE is one of our biggest customers, along with Air Products and Permea to name a few. But we also have an aerospace and one off "department". Me being family and a noob..well, I get stuck running production and night shift

 

[WolfLMM]

JohnBoy

How do you all keep the floor so clean and how does the paint last:rofl:

 

[dmaxlover]

I don't have a degree in economics so this may be a stupid question, but here is go's. Around here (WI) the average cost for cnc machining is around $60/hr, while let's say a auto dealership may charge up wheres of 50% more than a machine shop. How does that work considering all the overhead and training needed to run the machines?

I'm not by an means a master mechanic, but I can get myself around a car or truck pretty darn well, but how many mechanics can walk into a machine shop and start dropping parts off a machine the same day?

Just looking for a good answer to this, as it's been bothering me for some time now.

 

[McRat]

I don't have a degree in economics so this may be a stupid question, but here is go's. Around here (WI) the average cost for cnc machining is around $60/hr, while let's say a auto dealership may charge up wheres of 50% more than a machine shop. How does that work considering all the overhead and training needed to run the machines?

I'm not by an means a master mechanic, but I can get myself around a car or truck pretty darn well, but how many mechanics can walk into a machine shop and start dropping parts off a machine the same day?

Just looking for a good answer to this, as it's been bothering me for some time now.

Basically, Topeka Chevrolet's service dept doesn't have to compete with Pakistan, China, India, Mexico or other dealerships where the labor is less that $2.00/hr.

 

[WolfLMM]

Not to mention all the competition in the machine shop arena.

 

[dmaxlover]

Not to mention all the competition in the machine shop arena.

There is a auto repair shop on every corner, not true with machine shops.

 

[WolfLMM]

Dunno, A lot come in and out of business around here.

FWIW we dont accept 60.00 dollar per hour work, we would go out of business. Our time is more valuabe than that.