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Need advice - Dual Spindle, Ø >65mm, Live tooling, Compact Lathe

Hatmpatn

Plastic
Joined
Jan 2, 2018
Hello! We are spending so much money on manufacturers here in Sweden that we are considering buying our own lathe to make our main part.

We are therefore wondering if you guys could help us out in what we should look for?

There is tight with space in our facility so the requirements are as follows;

*Compact
*Spindle bore Ø > 65mm(2,56 inches)
*Dual spindle(has a sub spindle?)
*Live tooling
+As cheap as possible

The product is a steel-ring that is about 9mm thick that needs milling from live tooling from both sides. Takes about 3min to manufacture in the Mazak machine that is producing them now.

I'm very novice in this and I would appreciate your indulgence =)

Thanks in advance!
 
Mazak QTU-350MSY. I have the smaller QTU-200MSY (42mm bar capacity). Lowest priced live tooled lathe with sub spindle I could find.
 
Thank you for the advice! Do you know the price of it? If not, what did you pay for your 200MSY?
 
Yes, we do have a distributor for Takisawa. We will contact them for a quote on the TS-4000YS.
 
Yes, we do have a distributor for Takisawa. We will contact them for a quote on the TS-4000YS.

I got a Takisawa TCN2500 gantry model last year that I have been VERY happy with. Super basic options, though, so I can’t speak for the live tooling or sub.

Are you chucking these parts up one at a time or barfeeding them?
 
Nakamura AS200 seems very promising. I hate that there are no displayed prices anywhere.

As it is now we are barfeeding but i dont think we can fit a barfeeder station. Can you just attach one long bar to the machine and it will feed by itself intill the one bar runs out or is it the barfeeder that performs the entire motion?
 
What is the status of your CAM situation?

If you're only making one part then it shouldn't be a big deal, but if you want/need to generate code for multiple parts, that would be different. Only reason I ask is, with tricked out Turning centers it makes a difference, and still a different answer if you are considering Mazak (or Okuma really).

R
 
Can you just attach one long bar to the machine and it will feed by itself intill the one bar runs out or is it the barfeeder that performs the entire motion?

Doubt that you'd want a 2"+ od bar hanging way out the back end of the machine, but if you get the subspindle, you have the built-in barpuller.

Sure, you're gonna have to cut the bars to main spindle length ( or a bit longer if you're brave ), but you will get a done-in-one solution without the real estate cost.
 
Nakamura AS200 seems very promising. I hate that there are no displayed prices anywhere.

As it is now we are barfeeding but i dont think we can fit a barfeeder station. Can you just attach one long bar to the machine and it will feed by itself intill the one bar runs out or is it the barfeeder that performs the entire motion?

The TS-4000 Takisawa can handle a 4' section of bar. You will need to run a spindle liner for your diameter bar. Through hole is 3.23". You will then use the sub to pull the bar. Your rings will run about 3 hours approximately on a 4' bar or tube, so you could do without a separate bar feeder.
 
The AS-200 seems like a nice machine, supposed to start around 65-75K(British pounds) according to a few youtube videos, I don't know about USD pricing. Tsugami M08SY might also be worth a look, seems to offer quite a bit for the price, not sure how good they are.
Prices with anything seems to vary a lot with area/dealer.
 
We are running parts that are very similar to each other, 9mm thick rings but with other patterns on the milling from the live tooling.

Thank you for all the advices, I will try to get quotes on every single one of them here in Sweden.

What are your thoughts on looking at machines on Alibaba. They sell new for a fraction of the machines that you have suggested in this thread. What can one expect from a chinese machine that fulfills all of our requirements above but at the price of 14,000USD?

Such as this one: Ck5l Low Price For Cnc Lathe/ Cnc Turning Center/ Live Tooling Turret / Double Spindle - Buy Cnc Turning Center,Low Price Cnc Lathe,Double Spindle Cnc Turning Center Product on Alibaba.com
 
What can one expect from a chinese machine that fulfills all of our requirements above but at the price of 14,000USD?

Such as this one: Ck5l Low Price For Cnc Lathe/ Cnc Turning Center/ Live Tooling Turret / Double Spindle - Buy Cnc Turning Center,Low Price Cnc Lathe,Double Spindle Cnc Turning Center Product on Alibaba.com

I would expect for my family to never see me again after jumping off a bridge if I bought that thing. Seriously, though, it depends on what you ask of it. If this is your first machine you're definitely going to want something with factory (and PM forum) support as you WILL have questions/challenges. You said you are spending, "...so much money..." on outsourcing you should be able to do the math and determine how much you can invest to pay yourself back in however much time you want. Maybe a used machine, who knows.

If you can share approximate annual volumes and how much you are currently spending on the purchased parts we can offer more useful input...please do that! This sounds like a big decision for your company.
 
I understand that there must be something "wrong" with the china machines at the price they are selling at. But since I am very novice at this I thought that I would ask what differs.

Regarding what we spend on manufacturers we have spent about 3 times as much as that china machine costs in the half a year we have existed as a company.
 
I usually am not a great cheerleader for Haas, but they do make a decent machine at a very good price. They certainly are not Mori or Mazak quality, but we have an SL-10 and it has made us a ton of money. The live tooling on the Haas machines were at one time a bad joke, but they have improved.
 
We are running parts that are very similar to each other, 9mm thick rings but with other patterns on the milling from the live tooling.

Thank you for all the advices, I will try to get quotes on every single one of them here in Sweden.

What are your thoughts on looking at machines on Alibaba. They sell new for a fraction of the machines that you have suggested in this thread. What can one expect from a chinese machine that fulfills all of our requirements above but at the price of 14,000USD?

Such as this one: Ck5l Low Price For Cnc Lathe/ Cnc Turning Center/ Live Tooling Turret / Double Spindle - Buy Cnc Turning Center,Low Price Cnc Lathe,Double Spindle Cnc Turning Center Product on Alibaba.com

Run away screaming from purchasing that Chines crap. You will regret it.
 
Regarding what we spend on manufacturers we have spent about 3 times as much as that china machine costs in the half a year we have existed as a company.

Okay, so you are trending around $90k on outsourcing in your first year, and I assume you would expect sales to rise since you are just starting out. That could justify buying a new or used machine to make the parts yourself, but first you need to determine if you want to get into the whole machining thing...it's an entire trade in itself, so one of you will have to learn it or hire someone who already knows it. Are you prepared to make that plunge? Before you go any further, though, can you share approximately how many parts, current cost per part, and a rough sketch of a part? We might be able to estimate how much time it would take for you to make the parts so you can then multiply that by your labor rate, etc. to determine if it makes any sense at all....
 
Okay, so you are trending around $90k on outsourcing in your first year, and I assume you would expect sales to rise since you are just starting out. That could justify buying a new or used machine to make the parts yourself, but first you need to determine if you want to get into the whole machining thing...it's an entire trade in itself, so one of you will have to learn it or hire someone who already knows it. Are you prepared to make that plunge? Before you go any further, though, can you share approximately how many parts, current cost per part, and a rough sketch of a part? We might be able to estimate how much time it would take for you to make the parts so you can then multiply that by your labor rate, etc. to determine if it makes any sense at all....

I am aware that it will take much time from us taking care of the CNC, but lets be honest, so does all the hazzle and problems that occur with our manufacturer. Something is always off in every single batch and now our trust is so low that we travel to their location every time a new batch is started in their Mazak machine, to ensure we will be happy with the part. Would be awesome to have that control in house. Some times you just have to do things yourself..

I will talk to my company regarding sharing more information on the part. In the mean time I will trust that you are right in not buying a chinese CNC machine and start to aquiring quotes for all of the model types you guys have listed so far.

Would you like me to share the quotes I get, or is that in some way not fair to the CNC companies?
 
I am aware that it will take much time from us taking care of the CNC, but lets be honest, so does all the hazzle and problems that occur with our manufacturer. Something is always off in every single batch and now our trust is so low that we travel to their location every time a new batch is started in their Mazak machine, to ensure we will be happy with the part. Would be awesome to have that control in house. Some times you just have to do things yourself..

I will talk to my company regarding sharing more information on the part. In the mean time I will trust that you are right in not buying a chinese CNC machine and start to aquiring quotes for all of the model types you guys have listed so far.

Would you like me to share the quotes I get, or is that in some way not fair to the CNC companies?

Well that's certainly a good reason to consider bringing the job in-house!

I'm not exactly sure why but I think it is bad form to share quotes in a public forum, so I think the quotes for the machines you can keep to yourself, but we need to know approximate cost for approximate annual volumes of a part you can share the print (AND TOLERANCES!) to tell you how long we think it would take on machine "x" so you can do the math from there.
 








 
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