40 way tool post advantaged ?

On my previous thread about lantern tool posts, contributors commented on the 40 way tool post. What are the obvious advantages say over an Aloris QC setup ?

The beauty of the 40 poaition tool post system is you can re-orient the tool at will and they repeat very consistently. Mine is 30 years old and I get 0.0003" repeat tool registrations every time. They are expensive and the holders are tricky to make.

Tool post and rocker has been around for a jillion years and it work every well especially for onesy twosey work but not too satisfactory for heavy cuts. I still use them for some things especially when unusual access and near machine capacity work is involved.

If I had my druthers, I'd pick a 40 position (Multifix style) tool post.

If money was a consideration if use an Aloric style wedge tool post. Import or US; it doesn't make much difference except years down the road when durability of the system begins to tell.

I'd still keep the tool post and rocker handy and a range of old style tool holders, wierd boring bars, etc. Machine shops especially home machine shop live or die by the old stuff seldom used but oh so handy when the chips are down.

Forrest's answer is absolutely right (of course), but to add, I would emphasize how easy it is to reorient the tool to nearly any direction with a 40 position post. With aloris posts, you have a choice of 90* for toolholder locations. That means that for anything in between, you have to rotate the base, which kills any repeatability. With a 40 position post, you can rotate the tool to practically any position, making it easy to set the tool to strange angles and then re-set it to the normal position without losing location. The Mori-Seiki lathe at work has a 40 position post, while the 10ee has an aloris. I prefer the mori's post by far.

One thing, though. I've never seen a "small" 40 position post. Are they made in any sizes smaller than CXA-equivalent?

If you want to fit a small lathe, the 40way (like most toolposts, including 4 tool turrets) is (to my way of thinking) really too bulky, even when scaled down. It gets hemmed in by the tailstock and chuck jaws, and you can end up with more overhang than ideal on a small lathe

The Tripan is specifically designed for these situations, and is quite nifty (and like the Multifix extremely good on repeatability)
http://www.anglo-swiss-tools.co.uk/tripan.html

These people used to carry Multifix also, but don't appear to do so any more.

As for their prices, as JP Morgan said "If you have to ask, you can't afford it"

For the smallest sizes of Mulfifix, (the SPI version) you could try Penn
http://www.penntoolco.com/catalog/products/products.cfm?categoryID=1558

They still list the Aa, which is for lathes up to 9" swing. Don't know if they still carry it in practice - they're not inexpensive at $800 with four holders, but the killer is the per-holder price, which interestingly they do not seem to list these days. The holders do have lots of ground splines, so it's hardly surprising.

From an engineering design point of view, the rigidity of the Multifix concept seems very attractive. I'm not sure anyone really notices in practice, but sometimes lots of small things add up to one big thing, and that's nowhere more true than in truly excellent machine tools.

For someone on a budget (ie most of us) there is another way of substituting effort for dollars

I recently reconfigured a 'Rapide' piston type (clone of an English Dickson) to index at 45 degree increments, taking advantage of hardened bushes sunk into the top of my Willson compound by the manufacturer, for their own 4 tool turret (I don't much like these in practice, although theirs was a goodie)

I tempered the bushes back to enable accurately line-reaming them with the toolpost clocked up at the eight increments, sitting on the compound whose base was bolted down on the mill table (having ground a reference face on the toolpost first).
I strapped a V block to a corner (favouring the reference face) to dial up the 45s.

The reaming was done with a double-ended tool I made, whose solid body was a close fit in the hole in the toolpost (which I'd had to move, with some difficulty, due to the VERY hard case). It had a spade drill about 9.8 diameter at one end and a short D-bit at 9.98 at the other
Then I made a few passes with a simple copper lap, taper reamed, split and knocked onto a taper pin (no screw adjustment needed, just tapping up and down the taper), charged with diamond dust, so that now the indexing pin (which is a long, plain hardened pin knurled at the top end) makes that delicious 'pop' whenever I pull it out.

This means when I go to an intermediate angle, I at least can come back to a repeatable position at any of the 8 places.
If I find myself needing other angles, I'll just add more pin locations.

The main reason I wanted to make these really accurate is that I have several holders for a morse taper shank, for drilling with rapid retraction from the carriage handwheel and power feed. Great for deep holes in materials which work-harden. Naturally when drilling from the toolpost the angular misalignment has to be minimised.
I also made a simple jig for setting the cross slide in the right place (ie no 'setover')

The Dickson toolposts (and the better quality Italian clones, like 'Rapide' and 'Rapidue' are hellishly expensive these days, and frankly from an engineering design standpoint I thnk they have some major theoretical failings - at best, they're 'old fashioned'.

In comparison with the Multifix, the cantilever and the unfavourable mechanical advantage of the downforce with respect to the piston (It's different from the dovetail piston layout common in the US)

However in practice they seem to work just fine....

PS another US option, considerably more affordable (and the toolholders look as though they'd be quick and easy to make) is the OmniPost
http://www.krfcompany.com/overview.html
I particularly like their angled toolholders, and they also do some which angle up like an Armstrong - nifty for fiddly onesy-twosy stuff.

I realize that this thread specifically asked about 40 position toolposts, but how about the 24-position Aloris indexable tool posts? Are they a reasonable compromise, particularly if you already have a collection of Aloris holders and don't need to mount multiple holders simultaneously?

I have an Omnipost on my Rivett 1020, it is a durable and rigid setup. Have no fears that the tool holder will rotate around the post in a cut, not going to happen. At least it has never happened to me and I have made some hefty cuts with that machine. Downside is that I have the largest size they make and its probably good up to a 2" center height over the compound, so my Rivett, at 1.5 is close to max size. The tool holders would be easy to make but the ones KRF sells are so cheap that by the time you buy a big chunk of med. carbon, cut it, drill it, tap it, harden (yes all the parts are hardened) it and finish it (black oxide, very durable) its cheaper to buy theirs. I am planning on making a scissor knurling holder for it however, not offered from KRF.

Aloris website: Temple of the Arcane

Peter Miles said:

I realize that this thread specifically asked about 40 position toolposts, but how about the 24-position Aloris indexable tool posts? Are they a reasonable compromise, particularly if you already have a collection of Aloris holders and don't need to mount multiple holders simultaneously?

Click to expand...

This sounded interesting so I went to the Aloris website. The "Products" page brought up a small graphic showing some very interesting looking options. The only way past this page appears to be to select what you want to look at, from ten pages of anonymous, cryptic and arcane product codes - no pictorial cues whatsoever.

Why do manufacturers hand their websites over to idiots, and are those same manufacturers incapable of auditing the results by putting themselves in the shoes of a new prospect who knows little or nothing about what they offer but wants to know?


Anyone would think the company culture had never recovered from being named after some guy's name spelled backwards....

* * * *

After writing this I decided to go back and give them one more chance. I knew that an 'AXA' was a complete toolpost system, so I clicked on that. The thumbnail shows where that got me. No further links, and the ONLY item of information was the price, which had already been disclosed in the cryptic list I'd come from.



I'm not often driven to speechlessness but for once I'm almost forced to resort to an emoticon...

Troup, go to the Aloris home page at www.aloris.com and download their complete catalog at the link on that page:
http://www.aloris.com/content/user_1/Aloris2006Catalog.pdf

That is about 24 MB in size, so hopefully you have a speedy connection.

Does 52Kbs count as speedy ?

I'm personally getting a little impatient with the internet turning into a massive black hole for bandwidth. Individual pages are no more useful than in the days when dialup was the norm, but they surely load slower, if at all.

Why is it that a freshly discovered resource is wasted and plundered until it becomes scarce and expensive (like junk-free satellite orbital slots, which some say will shortly become a memory)

Given that most bandwidth is a toxic wanderland for spam, and most of the rest is porn, I think an observer from off-planet would find humans pretty unpromising, probably not worth trying to save as potential pets.

However (returning with a jolt to the topic at hand, which is DEFINITELY not a waste of bandwidth !) I do thank you warmly for your attempt to mitigate Aloris' commercial stupidity.

It would appear that their info is like army boots in the bad old days: they came in two sizes. Tiny, and Colossal. I guess the most optimistic slant I can put on it that, on average, they've got it about right !

Troup I sympathise, web developers these days are getting useless, filling their site with fluff that wastes potential customers time. Not to mention things which do not work, way too much script and propriety formats which add nothing of value of the site, maybe they were put there to impress the corporate types who sign the cheque rather than the people who buy the product, not a good idea for a company who wants to stay in business long term.

Back to the multifix toolpost, great to use I would not have any other type of QC toolpost, repeatability is excellent and the ability to change the tool angle in a very rigid manner is neat, no idea what they are like on small lathes but they are more compact than a turret toolpost.

I thinks the aloris style toolpost is a US thing, in Australia the multix is quite common at least until the Chinese copies of the aloris have flooded the market, silly thing is that there are 2 Chinese copies of the multifix but I have never seen one for sale over here

40 positions is good in the brochure but I'm unconvinced as to any major real world advantages. The two obvious big advantages exploiting the fine angle adjustment are:-
1) minimise grinding waste when using forged tools by setting the shank at a suitable angle
2) setting the correct approach angles when working with the top-slide set at an angle e.g. putting on fine cuts, thread cutting by running down the flank, chamfering and so on.

I don't really buy the "change the angle of approach of a tool for different jobs" idea. I've had South-Bends for over 25 years and have historically favoured the use of multiple 4 way tool-post assemblies (usually with only two tools mounted to reduce stab risks) which can be rapidly interchanged by loosening the clamp handle and sliding the whole lot out of the top slide complete with key. Obviously I can, and have, set the tool at any suitable angle. However, all to often, trying to present a tool at an angle usefully different to that it was ground for results in the side acting as a distinctly sub optimal form tool after a cut or two. Similarly trying to exploit the angle changes possible with a lantern post frequently ends up with sub-optimal cutting (having to change all the angles simultaneously doesn't help here) after a fair bit of futzing about to get things on centre. In the lantern case its probably quicker to grind a new tool! Clearly mounting versatility provides useful get out of jail capabilities but how often do you end up really stuck for access and how much do you want to pay for the jailbreak pass.

If I can be excused a lateral thinking digression.

If all goes to plan come Monday a Smart & Brown 1024 will be replacing my Heavy 10 and I shall have to re-think my smaller lathe tool post options as the S&B top-slide has no tee slot. It does come with a Dickson T2 compatible block and a couple or three tool-holders. My scrap yard rescue P&W B also came with a T2 block and several tool-holders along with over a cubic foot of forged tools. The logical thing would be to share holders and tools as I've now accumulated about 16 holders, sufficient for the basic ready to go set comprising:-
knife and roughing tools in left and right hands at compromise (ferrous) angles.
finishing tools in right and left hand for ferrous, alloy and brass.
threading tools in 55 and 60 degree angles
parting tool, compromise angle boring tools in larger and smaller sizes
with a spare or two. Realistically I'd have to accept loading boring tools according to the job in hand but all the rest are ready. My blocks have indexing pins so arranging positive location at the two or three angles I use will not be difficult. If I wanted lots of angles a vernier pin type sub base working on the same principle as a spin indexer could be arranged fairly easily.

That said, over the past few years I've come to the conclusion than the idea of having triplet of rapid interchange two slot blocks carrying the three styles of Armstrong tool holders, a parting tool along with two boring tools and simply swopping tool bits as required looks very attractive. Plain tool-bits are much easier to fixture for grinding at specific angles than forged tools and its no big deal to incorporate vernier style angle setting into the base. Maybe its time to decide what sort of 1/3 rd turn to lock holding mechanism I shall use, put my money where my mouth is, and find out how much adjustment theory needs to become satisfactory practice.

Clive

Well this might be off the mark as to the question, but i have a MultiFix post on my Romi M17 program lathe.
Of course my requirements may be different form the question, but the 40 poaition post is without question better in some respects over a good wedge style Aloris post.
When i first bought the Romi i was somewhat disappointed with its cutting precision. I was always messing with the tool wear offsets trying to hold size. I had fitted the machine with a new Aloris CXA post. Choice was simple, had 3 other lathes in the shop using the same post so interchange of tooling was a good thing....
I was recounting mu frustration with the lathes performance to a friend. He offered me the use of a MultiFix "B" post to try as a compairson....the difference was remarkable.
With the Aloris my repeat size was never better than .0006 or more on the diameter. With the MultiFix (a used post at that) the tollerance went immediately to holding .0002" on the diameter with tool changes.....
The MultiFix is also better located...having a ground internal center bore plus two dowel bores. Using a fitted center stud and both dowels i often use my multifix to drill to 1" da. in steel off the post using power feed......stays put , does not rotate and is dead true.

Cheers Ross

Ross

I don't do much repetition turning so repeatability of tool tip location is not quite so important to me as it clearly is to you, but having just commissioned a Dickson-style piston toolpost (as described further up this thread) with particular attention to location, with a view to drilling from the post, I'm interested in your point about location.

I presume from looking them over that the clamping and the post on the Multifix offer superior rigidity, and I guess this would be a further help, although I guess twist drills are not hugely sensitive to sub-minute of arc deviations from true alignment.

Is the drill chuck holder designed with the axis of the drill offset as though for a boring bar, forming a major cantilever (in plan view), as for the Rapidue/Dickson?

It occurs to me that if the holder had a male taper (eg JT3) to go straight into the chuck, the chuck could 'grow' perpendicularly from the holder, so it could line up with the post in plan view. However the cross slide would not travel far enough inwards on most lathes for this to line up with the spindle, I guess.

In my case it's touch and go on this score, but academic because I just don't have the horsepower or the chutzpower (sic) to rotate a workpiece around a 1" drill at the same time as supplying power feed to the carriage -- given the inevitable friction due to the vertical cantilever, and the fact that it's loading the keepers against the underside of the bed, and knowing that they're not designed or lubricated for loads like this, in the case of older lathes.

Clive

interesting and thought provoking post. I agree that the conventional modern-day solutions are not automatically improvements, in individual situations, over a well chosen combination of former technology.

I do think the large T slot favoured by the American lathe builders is pretty convenient basis for a 'flexi-swap' tooling package, certainly in the up-to-10" range.
On a bigger lathe with heaps of grunt and heavy chucks (I too had a 'junker' P&W Mod B, what a machine!) I think they look a bit vulnerable in the event of a crunchup. But essentially I think they were a good idea while lanterns were a bad one.

I hadn't thought of your idea of vernier holes - I like that, and will bear it in mind if my 45 degree increments prove insufficient. I like the idea of each extra hole in my toolpost block giving me eight extra locations - at the very least I certainly think it could be handy to have extra positions say 10 degrees left from the cardinal positions. Much easier (and more rigid) than building angled toolholders, which I had thought I might do. so THANKS for that.

Clive603 said:

..... the idea of having triplet of rapid interchange two slot blocks .......
Clive

Click to expand...

Have you thought of possibly making the angle between your two slots less than 90 degrees, perhaps along the lines of the Tripan? (ref anglo-swiss website)
Admittedly this seems more suited to small lathes, where real estate on top of the compound gets really scarce for more than one tool at a time.

On my small lathes (mainly Myfords) I've recently gone right back to the ancient clog clamp, which I used to hate with a passion. On mature reflection, and with careful adaptation so all my tool shanks are 16mm deep, it turns out to be a really great system.

What makes it work for me now is tangential toolholders (mainly Ifanger). I got a couple of the former for free with a lathe (they hadn't even appeared in the listing) and they soon won me over - I've found more at auction and even purchased one new - quite a vote of confidence, given what they cost.

I supplement these with the odd Armstrong type for special form tools and such, and one "Diamond" type tangential toolholder, made in Aussie. Not up to Ifanger standards, but it takes standard HSS blanks, so I tend to use it first on material of 'unknown provenance' - it's hard on the wallet taking the corner off a genuine Ifanger tip.
It's thanks to them that I discovered that cobalt HSS is no harder than standard, sometimes in fact a bit softer.

Nice score with the Smart and Brown !.
Where I come from such brands are like religious saints: you've seen 'em in lots of pictures, and you know they've got a pretty special reputation, but you've never actually clapped eyes on one and never expect to.

The one legendary brand we have masses of, because of a very active dealership, is DSG. There's one making spaniel eyes at me at the local machinery dealer, almost my very favourite model (med. heavy 17x48) 20ish hp and a hydraulic copy in good nick (for its age) for about 2200 quid.

I bought a NOS Suisse Multifix from Monarch last year. I had been previously using KDK tool posts which are really nice. This multifix beats it hands down. it so nice to be able to move the holder one position to get a better angle on a facing cut or something and then go back to the original spot.

Bad thing.... Even the chinese knockoff holders are spendy. $53 each from Shars. They are pretty well built.