Looking for CNC lathe - prefer new, no CAM

[Ianagos]

Accu-length. Nice kit. The spec'd runout is less than the Hardinge, so I went with Royal. I'll tell you what pissed me off though. I needed a metric collet for the parts I'm making. Didn't ship with the rest, wait a week, ship date moved, repeat. Final got pissy and the guy was like "it would take 2 weeks if we got in on the schedule right now". Order was weeks old at the a point. Had to get an e-collet which was case hardened. My lack of experience and tooling make boring it to size nerve racking and probably not good for the machine. Finish was crap so I was out 600 and had to get the nearest english size. Pretty bad taste in my mouth, but oh well. I chalk most of it up to my lack of experience, but if the sales guy stops in my shop, he's going to hear it. Got the bar puller from them too, again nice kit.

It looks like you have a qc 65 or qc 42 quick change collet system. In the future you can just order the collets from hardinge. If you have that system they are all interchangeable. I believe royal and hardinge just copied a European standard or brand maybe hainbuch.

Microcentric sells hainbuch collets or atleast used to. Being European I bet they have a lot of metric collets.

I wouldn’t think any would be any better than the other. If anything I would thing royal would be the least accurate of the 3 big makers of those in the US.

When I was trying to fixture a new machine royal put off the vibe right from the get go that they were going to screw me so I just took them off the list of options.

 

[cosmos_275]

It looks like you have a qc 65 or qc 42 quick change collet system. In the future you can just order the collets from hardinge. If you have that system they are all interchangeable. I believe royal and hardinge just copied a European standard or brand maybe hainbuch.

QC65. Yup, used to be whoever, then the patent expired, now several make it. My understanding is the difference in runout is one less adapter plate for my machine.
I get a discount on the collets through a distributor, I thought Hardinge was direct, so no discount (cheaper list price). That's a good thought on using another brand collet. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Josh@OTTP]

You can buy lyndex collets from msc for the 65 and maybe the 42 versions. Haas also has collets that should work, I haven't used their though.

 

[Ianagos]

Not sure if they are still doing it but hardinge was offering the Chuck and 5 collets for $3600 not that long ago. Way better deal than pretty much anyone else. You can barely buy 6 royal collets for that price. And I’ve never known hardinge to make low quality stuff.

I’ve been on and off about buying that. I have a microcentric Chuck and a bunch of collets including a master s-20 collet but I don’t have the correct adapter plate.

 

[david n]

You can buy lyndex collets from msc for the 65 and maybe the 42 versions. Haas also has collets that should work, I haven't used their though.

I have a handful of the Lyndex 65 collets..............they perform as they should and I can buy 'em $40-60 cheaper than Hardinge or Royal..................

 

[Rick Finsta]

We used a collet pad system at the old shop and it was really nice. Don't remember who made it, though.

I never thought Hardinge collets were overpriced and I've bought collets and guide bushings direct for years. Always get them next day if they are in stock, too.

 

[cosmos_275]

You can buy lyndex collets from msc for the 65 and maybe the 42 versions. Haas also has collets that should work, I haven't used their though.

I'm getting the Royal ones for less than what MSC shows on the Lyndex and also lower than Hardinge list.

I wonder why Royal or anyone doesn't make e-collet from AL. The case hardened one with the 3 lobes means you're hitting a hardened edge 6x per rev. I could not get it deburred and as I said the finish was crap so it was a total fail. Anyway, trying to never need to use those again.

 

[Ianagos]

I'm getting the Royal ones for less than what MSC shows on the Lyndex and also lower than Hardinge list.

I wonder why Royal or anyone doesn't make e-collet from AL. The case hardened one with the 3 lobes means you're hitting a hardened edge 6x per rev. I could not get it deburred and as I said the finish was crap so it was a total fail. Anyway, trying to never need to use those again.

Try a cbn insert and run it blazing fast next time. I cut my hard jaws on my lathe like this.