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Looking for info on slant bed gang style CNC lathes.

Thunderjet

Stainless
Joined
Jun 24, 2019
Just what the title says. My company is looking at purchasing a small gang style lathe.

Size requirements would be 5c collets,

8 tool stations.

No bar feeder but the ability to add later.

No live tooling required.

10'000+ RPM would be great.

Brands, and other stuff I may have missed.

Thanks in advance.
 
i've worked on some beefy CNC NEW lathes which fit your description. The GSK control isn't bad either.

currently working on a Muratec MW80 which does almost all of those things except for bar feed (but it's got a gantry loader)
 
Just what the title says. My company is looking at purchasing a small gang style lathe.

Size requirements would be 5c collets,

8 tool stations.

No bar feeder but the ability to add later.

No live tooling required.

10'000+ RPM would be great.

Brands, and other stuff I may have missed.

Thanks in advance.

I'm confused by you saying that you want 8 tool stations on a gang tool lathe. On gang tool lathes, the number of tools used is only limited by the X axis stroke, the size/type of tools needed, and your creativity in fitting all that on the table without interfering with the part/workholding.

Finding a machine with a spindle that will go 10k+ will be difficult. I only found one that will do 10k, and it's tiny... and not a slant bed. Fitting 8 tools on that small table would be a challenge.

USL-480 [3 inch] | Takamatsu Machinery Co., Ltd.

Takamaz also makes a larger machine but with an 8k rpm spindle. Miyano has machines that do 8k as well, but none of these are slant bed machines.

Plenty of builders make slant bed, gang lathes with 6k rpm spindles if that's suitable: OmniTurn, Hyundai Wia, Cubic, Gen Turn, Yama Seiki.
 
would a swiss type machine not be suitable for your requirements? normally these offer high RPM spindles with collet type setups normally up 1" or 1.25" bar stock
 
would a swiss type machine not be suitable for your requirements? normally these offer high RPM spindles with collet type setups normally up 1" or 1.25" bar stock

A 32mm swiss that can do 1.25" bar stock, even used, is going to cost 10x as much as a gang tool machine.
 
An Omniturn GT-75 meets all those requirements bar the spindle speed, they offer 4000 and 6000rpm but they aren't expensive and I've read a lot of good things about maintainability. Not the heaviest machine about but that may not be a real issue.

It would be useful to know what the max size of parts it'll be used for is though, 5C would imply 1" but if you're actually going to max out at 1/2" or 3/4" it's going to be far easier to get 8 tools setup and that could expand the potential options.
 
Worked on a couple Takamatsu gang machines many years ago. They were really good machines.

We just picked up a 1998 Takamaz Mini-Turn a couple months ago at a local auction. It's really clean and seems very well built.
 
An Omniturn GT-75 meets all those requirements bar the spindle speed, they offer 4000 and 6000rpm but they aren't expensive and I've read a lot of good things about maintainability. Not the heaviest machine about but that may not be a real issue.

It would be useful to know what the max size of parts it'll be used for is though, 5C would imply 1" but if you're actually going to max out at 1/2" or 3/4" it's going to be far easier to get 8 tools setup and that could expand the potential options.
You are recommending an omni-turn in 2022? Unless they upgrade the controls soon and do a refresh on design.....
 
If you're looking for a best-of-class do it all gangbanger today, then you're looking at a very tough row to hoe.
It isn't that there is no way to make one, but due to an utter and complete ignorance of the market as to their capability, noone is actually making one.
I have a 19 year old Haas MiniLathe, and it's the fastest and most capable freakin' turning machine this side of a swiss.
Unfortunately, it is also very "Haasified".
Meaning they've completely abandoned it 3 years after introduction because they had no idea how to market it to get get the annual sales up-to their required level.

All others currently on the market are pretty much limited to be set up for medium production runs or quick secondary ops.
Medium production runs which may not qualify or warrant a swiss, quick second ops that would be an abomination to put on a turret machine.
For the quick second ops you only have a couple or three tools at max, the medium runs have a complete set of very specialized custom tools to do whatever is needed.

The typical gang tool machines have a very limited clearance in X, meaning you will be fighting for elbow room at all times.
You may gain some of that by having a larger X-travel, but the most I've found was something like 18" or so....
Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't, specially not when you add in the typical 5C collet nose diameter of 3.5" which you need to stay clear of.
Slant or horizontal, 18" requires a pretty deep machine.
OK, so you make your X axis vertical ....
Some have figured out that going vertical reduces footprint greatly ... except they they did not make their machine more capable, just smaller.
Others recognized that very same problem, so instead of more travel or vertical, they've gone to a horizontal turret installed on a gangtool platform,
as-if that makes any fucking sense!
You see, the very benefit of a gang tool lathe is twofold:

1: With no real toolchange, your tool-to-tool time involves just enough X/Z movement as to not crash into the spindle.
IOW, your depart and clearance move of the previous tool is the approach move of the next tool.

2: Having no turret, your accuracy is entirely limited to the capability of the X and Z axes. Add the turret, and you're adding not only another variable
to the accuracy of the machine, but also the added time to retract, index and approach again....

Anyhow, I can go on and on about the stupidity of MTB's ignorance of what a gang tool machine could be capable of.
Instead, I wish you Good Luck in your endeavor finding a suitable gang tool lathe, which ( in my opinion ) is doomed to become a spectacular excersize in futility.
 
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You are recommending an omni-turn in 2022? Unless they upgrade the controls soon and do a refresh on design.....
The last shop I worked at had quite a few OmniTurns. It was the first CNC I ever ran. And this was a big aerospace shop.

I really like the OmniTurn. It is stupid simple to set up, program, and run - an easy machine to learn.

Also simple and inexpensive maintenance on the control - it's basically a PC that runs DOS. Hard to have something go wrong with it and if you have half a brain you can usually fix problems without having a tech come in.

It's not the latest and greatest, but obviously it's a design that has worked for 20+ years.

But the gang type lathe has it's place - I agree with others that wanting 8 tools on that type of setup is stretching it.
 








 
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