Looking for CNC lathe - prefer new, no CAM

[Mud]

Definitely spend the extra money for an accu-length system no matter what the brand. I cheaped out way back and got a pullback style and the amount of parts scrapped from being too short would have paid for the accu-length many times over.

1+ We don't scrap parts, but waste material and time dealing with excess bar ends, because you never know how long the last piece will be so you have to leave extra.

 

[david n]

Can anyone give me advice on collet tooling? I need something. I keep seeing ads for Royal. Their accu-length system seems pretty sweet, but pricey, about 4k then 2-300 per collet. Anyone use those? Thanks

I have Hardinge FlexC collets. Work great. They have a promo going..... buy the chuck and get 5 collets and the install tool for free. Same collets system as Royal, but cheaper to get into. Royal and Hardinge quick change collets are basically the same price, $300+/-. You can get Lyndex quick changers through MSC for around $240...........

https://www.hardinge.com/flex-c-promo/

 

[cosmos_275]

david n, thanks, yes I saw that in a thread a few months old.

So, is that a good up front investment for a small job shop? I saw another old thread where member semoure doomore(sp?) said he prefers all his soft jaws for his 6" chuck. Should I just make my own soft jaws starting out or is it better to go right for the fancy Hardinge/Royal setups? Thanks

 

[david n]

Job shop..............small runs/variety of parts.................a set of hard jaws and soft jaws are the way to go. It's still nice to have some kind of a collet chuck, even if it's just a plain old 5C(especially if you are runnin' small parts)........................That's all I had for years............

 

[david n]

And I'd only look at 8" chuck 2.5"+ bore machines..................If ya go with a 2" bar machine, you will always wish you had 2.5"+......................Both my Lynx lathes have 2.66" through the draw tube.................

 

[Mud]

Job shop..............small runs/variety of parts.................a set of hard jaws and soft jaws are the way to go. It's still nice to have some kind of a collet chuck, even if it's just a plain old 5C(especially if you are runnin' small parts)........................That's all I had for years............

We use an 8" 3 jaw 90% of the time, switch to a 3J collet for long runs of 1" dia or less. The collet chuck is more compact for tool clearance and easier to clean, lighter to accelerate. For real small diameter bar the bar can slip between the jaws of the chuck, won't with a collet. Sometimes we use W&S collet pads in a set of home made collet pad jaws when changing over to the collet chuck is too much of a PITA for a short run.

 

[david n]

Workholding will come down to the OP's needs..............One of my lathes has the FlexC collet chuck on it 100% of the time....................the other goes back and forth from the 8" chuck to the 5C.............and my new lathe will be switching between all 3...............................

 

[g-coder05]

Swapping between chuck and collets after a few times gets to be a fairly quick process 10-15 minutes. Im not sure how or if the machines you are looking at lock up the spindle but never use M19 to break the bolts or draw tube nut loose. Ive seen way too many serious accidents from guys locking the spindle with M19 and when they are torquing or un-torquing the bolts the spindle re orients either bashing them in the face with the breaker bar or yanking them in the machine.

My Okuma LB-15's don't have a break so its more of a PITA to swap but the Kia's have a big ass dick break on the ass of the spindle that you can lock up to swap everything out.

 

[13engines]

My apologies for the l slight hijack, but my question may also be of use to the OP, and there seems to be plenty of folks involved here that know about collet chucks and could possibly answer with a good degree of certainty. I'm also in the lathe collet chuck market. Both spindles. (8" and 6")

I have a dual spindle Mori Seiki of 2000 vintage and use an old style hydraulic bar feeder. (SPEGO) I usually run the pressure as low as I can go and still feed the stock. So far this seems to run in the 12-20 psi range. I'm pretty certain this means I have that pressure, or something close to it, pressing against the back of the bar and against my turret mounted feed-to-length stop. A little heads up - I have maybe 15 -ish 3J collets left over from back in the manual lathe Sojourn days. Part of my question involves are these worth making use of?

Question: Will that back pressure eliminate, improve, or do nothing at all against the forces and actions of a "pullback" 3J collet chuck, and secondly, of a newer Quick Change pullback one? If not, is there usually a learned reputability of how far off the stop the material is pulled, so a guy could adjust the stop position to include/add a facing pass after each cuttoff and reload? Some of the parts I run off the bar feed are fine with the cutoff face, but these are diameters around 1" so adding a facing pass isn't really a huge deal or time eater.

In short... is this pretty workable, or am I simply going to end up like others here and wish I'd never bothered???

I've already concluded that I'll go dead length on the sub.

Many thanks for the advice.

 

[BROTHERFRANK]

You will want dead length on the main as well as the sub if you plan on transferring from main to sub with collets. The collets won't be pushed or pulled on when you are alternately opening and closing during transfers. 3J collets are still popular and many of our clients use them on the sub-side of our TS series Takisawa machines. On the main side it is either S pad collet chucks or Royal QuickGrip for the most part. Royal QuickGrip has something interesting (QG65 and up?), it's a S20 collet pad master collet so you can use S20 pads in their QG65 chucks.

 

[cosmos_275]

Can someone explain what S pads are and why use them?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the collet thing. For secondary ops in the main, pull back type is not accurate? Seems Hardinge only offers pull back, whereas Royal has accu-length that I'm guessing is more accurate on length.

Seems getting a set of collets would be nice to start over making and maintaining a bunch of soft jaws. I'm a little curious on the closing range. If they are all ground to nominal, then oversize are getting grabbed by 6 line contacts and undersize are getting three smaller areas of contact almost like a 3 jaw. I guess for 2nd op, nominal or smaller is ok and on oversize, you might get marks?

 

[Mike1974]

Can someone explain what S pads are and why use them?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the collet thing. For secondary ops in the main, pull back type is not accurate? Seems Hardinge only offers pull back, whereas Royal has accu-length that I'm guessing is more accurate on length.

Seems getting a set of collets would be nice to start over making and maintaining a bunch of soft jaws. I'm a little curious on the closing range. If they are all ground to nominal, then oversize are getting grabbed by 6 line contacts and undersize are getting three smaller areas of contact almost like a 3 jaw. I guess for 2nd op, nominal or smaller is ok and on oversize, you might get marks?

Collet Pads for (S) Style Chucks >> Rovi Products, Inc.

 

[cosmos_275]

Collet Pads for (S) Style Chucks >> Rovi Products, Inc.

Clear as mud. So, is it an older collet chuck type that people have lots of collets for so Royal makes an adaptor type deal? Maybe that's cheaper than buying the full size Royal collet? Thanks, I'm a nube on lathe stuff.

 

[Ianagos]

The collets aren’t easy to get these days and it’s an old standard but I had a b60 collet chuck on the main and a b43 on the sub. I have most sizes of b60 collets and then s pad style collets in s10 s16 and s20

I like the chuck and changeout is quick but I’ve also used the royal quick change collets and they are faster. But you pay for that with the price. B60 collets new are about 50% the cost of the royals and with just a few collet pad collets you can just buy the pads and it’s even cheaper. Collets pads are about $50-$80 if I remember correctly.

Another benefit of the b60 that i don’t know if the royal has is that they have serrated collets that in my opinion are better for bar work. They will damage the bar a bit but I feel like they get a better grip but maybe I’m just imagining.

 

[13engines]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the collet thing. For secondary ops in the main, pull back type is not accurate? Seems Hardinge only offers pull back, whereas Royal has accu-length that I'm guessing is more accurate on length.

Seems getting a set of collets would be nice to start over making and maintaining a bunch of soft jaws. I'm a little curious on the closing range. If they are all ground to nominal, then oversize are getting grabbed by 6 line contacts and undersize are getting three smaller areas of contact almost like a 3 jaw. I guess for 2nd op, nominal or smaller is ok and on oversize, you might get marks?

Yes it's all a bit confusing. The Hardinge especially. They call their chucks "pullback," but there seems to be some kind of set-able stop if you're doing slug work. I don't understand how it works. For bar work, I think the nature of the QC collet chuck mechanism is not to traverse axially when closing. Please someone chime in if I'm wrong. The Hardinge literature is much more vague about the whole thing then Royal's that's for sure. For Royal if it doesn't say Accu-Length it's not dead setting. Hardinge is... I don't know for sure.

3J collets are nominal to I believe minus 0.004". Royal QC are +- 0.031 and Hardinge is +- 0.020" though it seems they offer them in many sizes surrounding standard nominal ones. I do get the idea from the Hardinge online store that all collets are held in stock as partially machined blanks and made to order. None appeared to be "in stock." Lead was 3-5 working days.

Being a small shop, collet chucking a twin spindle lathe is a serious investment which can easily hit 8-10 grand, depending on how many collets a person needs. The want is not a problem. The need is there to a fair degree, though the price a rough one. Still... getting rid of those windmilling, fan blade chuck jaws would be a dream. Plus the added acceleration and deceleration! Plus the clearance!

 

[david n]

FlexC..................Hardinge has two pull back models.....one of which has a dead length stop. I have one and it works great. They also have a push to close version. It also has the stop option............

 

[Panza]

..... 8axis mazak live tool:
Mazak MultiPlex 6200 Y CNC Turning Center Lathe, Live Tooling 2 10" chuck, swiss | eBay
Double turret, y-axis, double FULL spindles

A Multiplex is NOT a job shop lathe. While it looks great on paper it is a machine for running production and nothing else. It is incredibly tight in there. There is a reason that machine on ebay has a parts conveyor

13Engines: What you said about collet chucks and prices: Sooo true!

 

[BROTHERFRANK]

Clear as mud. So, is it an older collet chuck type that people have lots of collets for so Royal makes an adaptor type deal? Maybe that's cheaper than buying the full size Royal collet? Thanks, I'm a nube on lathe stuff.

I think you said it well. The S pads have been around a while. I believe it is a Hardinge design. They still support it. When ATS Systems (Top Of The Line Machine Automation Systems & Tool Accessories) sells a S-pad collet chuck, the master collet comes from Hardinge. I think you can get two or three sets of pads for the cost of one Royal QG collet. Probably a good chance you can find pads for sale like new on Ebay etc. too. The runout may not be as good but for 1st op bar work a few tenths won't make a difference. You can get emergency pads that you machine your self if you need tighter runout... Pull back collet chucks are essentialy a steel shell with a taper to match the collet and the collet is directly connected to the draw bar of the machine. The draw bar pulls back the collet into the taper to clamp and pushes it forward to unclamp. With a dead length (or Acculength, Truelength..) the collet is fixed in the chuck and the taper is a sleeve connected to the draw bar. The sleeve moves forward and back to clamp/unclamp the collet and the collet is stationary axially. For manual hand loading parts in a pullback, there are ways to make stops so that the parts repeat regardless of Diameter variations etc. Even using bar pullers with pull back chucks it is possible to get the material to repeat fairly well. Books have been written on these subjects I am sure.

 

[cosmos_275]

Just got off the phone with Hardinge. They have 3 models. DL model is dead length and is what he reccomends (equivalent to accu-length by Royal). Collet does not move axially, repeatability on length for 2op is excellent. Apparently, they can use Royal collet and vice versa, but Royal has a 52mm version (what I was looking at) and Hardine skips that size.

He also said S pads are handy for small stuff. Their smallest collet is .200". Also, they won't make extended collets, but they will make extended S pads. Also can be cheaper as each collet is 300 or whatever.

Edit: he also said their range is the same as Royal, they are conservative with their published numbers, Royal claims all of it. Many companies make these (he rattled off quite a list). They all had to wait for the patent to expire and now they all make it.

 

[cosmos_275]

So, the Flex C promo is not for size 42, just 65 and 80. Here's a comparison of Flex C 42 and 65 to Royal QG 52.

They all cost about the same at around 30 collets purchased, so shy of that the Flex C 65 is a good deal. If you only ever buy about 12 collets, you about a grand ahead with the Flex C65.