CMS / SNK small cnc lathes,

Hi,

In my search for small cnc lathes I've ran across this company. http://www.cmscnc.com/


It appears that the GT-Xpress machine is also sold under a couple other names with a few different options. It looks quite interesting and of good quality for such a small machine. Have any of you seen/used these or heard about them?

There's also another company called Realmeca that makes some small cnc lathes but with a turret and they look quite nice too.
http://www.realmeca.com/pages/liste_machines.php?lang=en

Anybody familiar with them?

Thanks

When I was looking for a lathe last year, I thought about a GT27. I'll look for the link. There was a company in Califirnia that was building a vertical tooled gang tooler. Nice little machine.
I'll look for the link. I thought it was the link you showed, but I think not.

At first I wanted to get a manual Hardinge HLV-H copy. 95% of my lathe work can be done on a machine like that. Mostly all under 1" dia and often over 1000 parts. Right now I've been doing it all on a 14x40 taiwan manual lathe. Good money but seems that cnc may be the way to go as I want to grow my business. So I started looking at the hardinge type cnc lathe. Like the Sharp, and Haas HPCL.

I'd like to stick to small work as everybody around here is already set up for all the medium sized stuff (1" to 12") and they're doing it cheap enough as it is.

I want to get into high tolerance work (+/-.0002") small bores and etc. So I'd like a machine that can do it with very good repeatability/accuracy and without me having to watch over it constantly.

I've done some more looking and CMS has another website with a couple other machines. http://www.cms-cnc.com/

After seeing the price of these machines. Like the GT-27 starting at over 40K, which puts it very close to a HPCL. For not very much more money we're into "normal" size cnc's with bigger work capacity. This is where it becomes very hard for me to make a decision.

A hardinge type machine can do longer work and has the tailstock and can take a 6" chuck which I do sometimes need. I'm very restricted on space since it would have to be inside my house( no garage). The Gt-27 or Gt-Xpress are a nice small size that would fit inside easily. But they don't have the Z lenght of a hardinge type lathe, although live tooling is possible and I could use it on some parts.

Seems theres really no way to get something that will do everything. If there was a decent price difference between the 2 the decision could be much easier.

SND
Try this one:

Cubic lathe

Vertical slide, Fast, Fast Fast...I don't remember what the costs were though.

Dont forget about Omni-turn machines, they offer two different models.

Charles

PBMW, thanks for that link. I had never seen those Cubic machines before. Looks like a very nice fast machine. Probably has a pretty nice price tag too. Unfortunately its floor space is too big for me, it won't fit in a 34" door. I only have about 36" x 58" to work with right now to fit 1 machine. Maybe thats my problem. I need a new place with a large shop. Problem is if I build a new place I'll have no money left for more machines.

The Omniturn looks quite nice too. Some interesting features like that pneumatic tailstock. Although I haven't seen a picture of it so I wonder how it works and fits on there. I wish they had a few videos. Only about half the weight of a GT-27 though so I wonder how it really compares in production.

Thanks,

They do have videos on the website...

http://omni-turn.com/Pages/Videos/Video%20page.html

The Omniturn GT jr looks like it will fit your bill nicely. Last time I was given a quote they were less than $30k and they sometimes have factory rebuilds available for less.

Charles

I believe they have a polymer/granite frame? I saw the gt express at Westec a few years back and talked to a guy (shill?) that had one and loved it. the design seemed well thought out. Supposed to dampen vibration real well and the demo was impressive.....

I would also look at the little SNK polymer base GT27
Nice little machine, can add full C axis and live tools too. I think a live tooled one was in the $73k rang. The Hardinge GT27SP is close to $80k

All looks very nice,
Their mill looks just like our Brown & Sharp CMM !

Dugards in the uk do a small cnc fixed head lathe with 1" capacity, y axis and driven tools and bar feed all for under £50k.

There is another firm in the uk who sell a "quick Tech" which is similar but a bit bigger.

Axe and Status also in the uk import a "polyGim" which is somewhere in between the two.

We looked at all these before we bought a big Gildemeister CTX.

None of those could put a 1/4" wide slot in 3/4" En1A (leaded easy cut mild steel) 1" deep, to make a small clevis at any sensible speed,

You can do small jobs on a big machine, but you can't do big jobs on a small machine.

This one here looks real pretty and seems to have quite a few options already on it. http://www.actionmachinery.com/writeups/17146.htm

What is really the biggest/longest part these could make without a tailstock? Seems that even with 1" dia stock it would be limited to about 3 inches. Some of the parts I want to do are about .312" dia and 2" long which I normaly have to use a tailstock for some support on the end. Would it be imposible to do such thing on a gangtool lathe like the one above and expect 16 or at least 32 finishes and no chatter? we're talking .0002" tolerance also.

Parts look nice on the videos. But they don't say what tolerance and finishes they're holding. So if anybody has experience on these or similar gang tool lathes that would be great.

thanks.

Hi SND:
I think with the diameter to length ratio and a diameter, tolerance and finish you describe, you're more realistically looking at a Swiss style machine.
Even with tailstock support, I'm not confident I could hold 0.0002" on diameter and maintain a high production rate on a conventional turret machine, never mind a gang chucker.
I've also heard some rather unpromising things about CMS machines in the past...in fact, I was going to buy one until I was advised against by a former Upgrade Technologies (predecessor to CMS)service tech.
Please don't take any of this as gospel; they may well have turned things completely around and be making first class equipment now, but I'd certainly want confirmation of this before I laid down my pennies.
Search for Upgrade Technologies on this BB and I'm sure you'll find the thread I was referring to.
Cheers

Marcus

I thought Upgrade was bought out by SNK a year or so ago.....
Have things changed that fast? That would not bode well I think.