Need advice on what Swiss style CNC lathe to buy

Please direct all responses to the newsgroup, i will check back often Thanks

-S

"Stan-O" wrote in news:1110898141.764996.91600 @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Tsugami. Especially if you buy it from me . Seriously though, I'm not sure what you mean by "indexing tools". Do you mean live tools? In Swiss capability increases with price. Are you thinking about a gang tool, turret/gang, or twin turret machine? Gang tool machines will be less expensive but usually have a fixed number of tool positions. Turrets offer the most flexibility but turret type machines are quite a bit more costly. Gang/turret machines can be a good compromise as long as your parts don't require a lot of I.D. operations. Depending on what type of parts you need to do, Tsugami has 1.0" capacity machines starting at about 155k with milling and sub spindle going on up in price to around 300k for a top of the line machine, with a lot of models in between. Take a look here:

Tornos Nomura Gildemeister Traub Hanwha KSI K'MX Maier

There are a couple of others as well. But once you go past Tornos on the list you're pretty much on your own as far as support, quality, etc..

Dan

As for indexing tools, yes i was refering to live tools, probably looking for a gang tooling machine, as for the capacity, i mentioned .75-1.0 just for increased size to do extra work, i might even start with a smaller machine, and perhaps a used one.

Dan if you could email me i'd like to talk with you further on this subject.

Thanks Stan

As Dan stated, more info would help a lot. We have two Tsugami gang tool swiss machines if you want info/opinions on them. But I would need to know more about the applications you will be using the machine for. There is such a vast range of machines in the CNC swiss world now that you really need to assess your needs very carefully.

Of the items in the following list, various machines will be stronger on a few of the points, but no machine will beat all others in all categories, so you have to decide what's important to you.

In no particular order and not limited to: Price. Delivery. Learning Curve. Mechanical Complexity/ease of setup/versatility. Controller complexity/power/ease of programming. Availability of aftermarket tooling. Left hand/right hand machine for shop layout. Max length of parts as well as diameter. Range of materials to be machined. Number of live tools desired, and orientation. HP, Rapid speeds, Max RPMs, etc. etc. etc. etc.

If you are familiar with swiss machines already, it will help you a great deal. If not, I would suggest posting as much as possible about the types of parts and jobs that you will be running on the machine, and the level of competence of whoever will be programming and setting up the machine. There are a handful of really sharp CNC swiss guys on this NG, and I'm sure they would chime in some useful info. Good luck.

Thanks for the info Bryce

As for the type of the machine, i have to do some further investigating, I will be the programmer/setup/operator to start and probably keep it that way. I believe my skill will carry me through it, even though i do not have any swiss experience.

As for the product, i will be catering to my customers needs, i just don't find it feasible to run 5000 (or 500,000) little parts on a 2 axis lathe, it's just not meant to do that. I wouldn't want to put someone/something through that monotony. I am a firm believer that selecting the correct machine for the job and selecting the proper tooling saves time, money, and effort. If i have to buy another machine, or source it out to someone that has the correct machine for the job, I will.

Thanks again

-S

"Stan-O" wrote in news:1111169881.395358.34240 @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Stan, You are a very wise man.

A *universal* machine is just that, universal and a compromise, decent at most things, but great at nothing. In any type of production, the most efficient machine, labor, tooling, and cost-wise, is a purpose-built, dedicated machine. Everything can be optimized out the wazoo for the particular product. Once you move away from that, it starts costing money, in one form or another.

Stan-o For my humble opinion, the Citizen is one of the best of the sliding headstock machines on the market.

Neal

A couple of things that I would mention besides the generic info you might find about swiss screw machines:

The sliding headstock style was originally designed to make parts that have long turnbacks - long slender parts that are difficult of near impossible to make on a conventional lathe. Gang tooling was adopted to the sliding headstock machine, which made it very fast. These two things (guide bushing and gang tooling) have been associated with swiss screw machines for decades, and it has been only fairly recent that machine builders have realized that high production machines do not need to be limited to the conventional swiss screw machine style.

The Tsugami machines that we have here have gang tooling, and sliding headstocks, but one of them is still outfitted with the rotary guide bushing, and one has an interchangeable chucking attachment. What the chucking attachment allows us to do is remove the rotary guide bushing and advance the main spindle collet up closer to the tooling - letting us firmly clamp the material as opposed to it running through a bushing. This does limit our Z stroke, and effectively our part length, to about 1.75" long, as opposed to the approximate 3" long travel with the rotary guide bushing installed. On the machine that we have setup for chucking, we make very short, high precision parts with TIR tolerances between IDs and ODs of usually .0002". This is almost not possible with a rotary guide bushing. On the machine that we have setup with a rotary guide bushing, we make long slender shafts with long turnbacks and snap-ring grooves placed too far apart to make in a chucking machine.

We were recently pondering the purchase of another screw machine, which has been postponed, but we were looking for chucking machines as exclusively as possible. Gildemeister makes a machine that is a sliding headstock, gang tooling machine that is only meant for chucking. Other machine builders have incorporated a chucking option.

On the other side of the spectrum, IIRC it was Hanwha (sp?) that advertised over 8" of headstock travel in one chucking, which enables you to make very long shafts without regripping the main spindle.

Also, with the ever growing advancement of live tooling in turning and swiss machines, there have become many options for tooling as well. Traditional gang tooling machines are limited to the amount of live tools that they can be fitted with. There are some machines with small work envelopes and quick pneumatic collet chucks (instead of hydraulic - slow) with either a combination of a gang tooling slide for turning and a turret for live tool milling, or twin turrets with the option of using either turret on either spindle at any time.

The type of parts that you expect to be making or the versatility that you need is going to decide the specialty of the machine that is best for you.

Hope this gives you a bit more info to consider. Good luck with your selection.

sliding

I noticed that Cubic Machinery was not included on the list of swiss machines, they are new on the market but offer a lot of features for the money. They also have a chucking version that does not require a guide bushing. 20mm machines start at $65K and top out at 32mm and $190K.

They will be at WESTEC.

Ringguy

"Cubicguy" wrote in news:1111561757.078279.295970 @l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

Like 1980's technology?

Japanese prices for a Chinese machine. Good luck to you. Or are the prices very negotiable?

Dan

Dan you sound cynical, Cubic's swiss line is sold in Japan due to the features and pricing. PS. Taiwan is considered by the US to be its own country not Chinese, The machines are cast, assembled, finished in Taiwan not mainland China. There is a quality difference between the 2 countries. The GTV gangtool they build is assembled in the US using japanese components and Taiwan castings.

Pricing, have you bought a Citizen 32mm 7-9 axis recently, they are way over $190K I'm sure that every machine tool builder is willing to negotiate, if your in the market try them.

Go f*ck yourself, you ignorant fool. Taiwan has officially been a province of China since 1945.