oil country lathe

hi all

has anyone any experience with oil country lathes? anyone suggest some good, reliable, heavy duty oil country lathes? anyone had any bad experiences with any manufacturers? please help as am needing to buy soon.

i have been looking

You should ask this on alt.machines.cnc, as well. Not many hobbyists have lathes with 30-foot beds. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

What's an oil country lathe?

A really long one, 25 feet or more. They're used for machining the ends of oil well pipe and related jobs.

Much shorter but big-bore lathes are often called "oil country lathes" today.

-- Ed Huntress

IIRC the main ingredient for an oil field lathe (which we sometimes called "hollow spindle lathes") was a large hole through the spindle. Many of the ma- chines, such as Gisholt, were set-up as turret lathes to handle the cutting, trimming, threading operations. The largest capacity machine we ever rebuilt had somewhere around a 14" to 16" hole through the spindle.

dennis in nca

As I tried to imply, the term has been modified some over the years. Oil-country lathes originally were very long, in addition to having a big spindle bore. In recent decades it's more common to call any lathe with a big hollow spindle, some of them quite short, an oil country lathe.

-- Ed Huntress

In that case, I have an oil country lathe to sell.

Mazak M4 22"x72", 3+" spindle bore, twin turret, with tooling. New control (Camsoft). I'll take $5K without the Camsoft license, $9K with.

Karl

I think the idea is around 5 or 6 inches plus.

-- Ed Huntress

Karl,

What means this here, "Camsoft license" ?

In that case, I have an oil country lathe to sell.

Mazak M4 22"x72", 3+" spindle bore, twin turret, with tooling. New control (Camsoft). I'll take $5K without the Camsoft license, $9K with.

Karl

Oil country lathe = oil field lathe? Which is what we called them in the used machinery business.

I imagine the term may have been modified because of changes in tooling, material or some such. The people we sold these oilfield machines to (all people in oil related industries by the way) never asked us for long lathes, but were intensely interested in the size hole through the spindle and the machines we rebuilt were all short (relatively) beds.

dennis in nca

Yup, same thing.

I think the early ones didn't have through-holes that were quite as big as the ones built since WWII. They'd put a whole section of pipe between centers. Some of those beds ran over 30' in length.

-- Ed Huntress

Hmmm. 800" between centers. Now, that's a real oil patch lathe, pard'.

-- Ed Huntress

Camsoft CNC pro sells for $4500 per package. There's a license number and dongle that goes with each seat. You're allowed to move the dongle between machines but only run one at a time.

Anyway, this machine won't run without buying a Camsoft software package.

Karl

How about 60+ feet?

Yes, and the ones I've seen had 2 chucks, one on each end of the spindle. So, one chuck where it normally is, the other is at the "back" end, to help support a long pipe.

Jon

They usually have a double chuck on them, one on each side of the spindle hole. I wish I had one in the shop.

John

The oil drilling bars have those API tapered threads on the ends that constantly get worn. If you get them too worn you will lose your string or bars down the hole.

John

The place up the road has a hole in the wall and steadies outside. Only enough to make it through the headstock ever comes in the building.

Wes

Up to a few months ago, my sister worked for a fishing tool rental company. Wes