90s Yam Slant Bed Lathe

Hi everyone,

I'm the soon-to-be owner of a 14x22 "Yam" slant bed lathe from a school auction. From what I can tell, they were also sold as "Cadillac" and a few other names, but are essentially copies of a mori-seiki design. If anyone can verify that, or has access to a manual, I'd love to find out more about it.

The lathe has an anilam crusader series M control which sits in a box/cabinet almost as big as the lathe. I'm not aware of any issues with the control, but won't know more until I have the lathe in my garage. The only physical issues I'm aware of with the lathe are that one of the servo motor brackets is broken, and the sheet metal on the back is dented. It's possible it may have tipped at one point, but a friend who is a CNC machinist looked it over and said there's no other apparent damage.

This will be my first CNC lathe. I have a couple of manual lathes, but no experience (yet) in the CNC world. This is strictly a hobby for me - I'm not planning to get into any type of production, but I do enjoy this stuff.

Before I invest too much time and/or money in the lathe, I had a couple of questions:

- is it worth trying to use the crusader control? Or should I be looking at a more modern control, or a PC-based control? The motors appear to be brushed DC servos.

- does anyone know if this lathe can be used manually as well as via CNC? I already have a 14x40 manual lathe, but space is at a premium in my garage so if this could fill that spot, I'd need to consider selling that one.

- if anyone has a copy of the manual, or any other information about this lathe or control, I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks in advance,

Lee

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If it works, replacing it would be pretty premature. I don't know your skill level working with industrial automation stuff, but it could take weeks or months to get it up and running for all I know.

I suppose if you are really good this the electronics and know the machine backwards then you will know what you can or cannot do.
Also by the time you figure that all out you need to be in the business of doing it to get your time invested knowledge back somehow in a dollar value ie selling upgrades.

So hook it up and see if you can get it to work, run programs first.

then if you want to invest the effort go on from there.

Crazy I’ve not seen another I sold an identical machine a month ago or so. Good luck with getting it running I’ll try to find the contact info to the guy who bought it as he was planning on scrapping the control so maybe there could be some spares there for you.

Thanks all
My experience with CNC is zero at this point... Have to start somewhere, though...


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Hi all,

I went out to pick up the lathe yesterday, but for a variety of reasons ended up coming back with just the crusader ML control (and the tailstock, but hey).

In an attempt to decide if the control is worth messing with, I switched it on to see if it would power up. The lathe is not connected at this point, but I'm impatient...

The fans in the cabinet powered on and started whirring, but the display doesn't come on. I left it powered up for 5 minutes or so to see if it needs to warm up, but the crt is still off. There's a fairly strong "electronics that haven't been switched on for years" smell from the cabinet, but nothing that definitely smells burnt etc.

Is it expected that the display won't power on, if the lathe's not connected?

Thanks for any advice

Lee

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That thing is hilarious. That's not a slant bed. Has absolutely nothing in common with a Mori.

Go buy an SL-0 or similar. That thing is just going to frustrate and disappoint you. It's not worth hauling it home.

Garwood said:

That thing is hilarious. That's not a slant bed. Has absolutely nothing in common with a Mori.

Go buy an SL-0 or similar. That thing is just going to frustrate and disappoint you. It's not worth hauling it home.

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I wasn't going to say anything but I tend to agree. A friend of mine has a slant bed Yam that makes a Mori or Okuma look dinky. I didn't know Yam made light duty stuff as every one I've seen in person was built like a brick shithouse.....but I've likely only seen 5 or 6 Yams

I almost bought an SL-0 about a year ago, it was the cutest little thing. No need for it so I wasn't willing to pay much

Nothing to really add, except I ran a couple "Yam" mills back when I got started in cnc. Never thought I would hear that name again.

You won't be able to do much. The control was set up to work with the lathe. There will be alarms tied to low way oil, and other stuff. If you get far enough into it electronically, you might be able to do something, but it's not worth the agony.
I have schematics for a Crusader 2 with M functions, but for a milling machine. Wouldn't do you any good. There's almost zero support for those controls any more.

Looks like a machine built for the purpose of school training like those little Emco things that were prolific in the 90's.

I may have a more of the heavier end of Mori machines so I don't agree with the dinky part. The last Yam lathe I looked at looked identical to an Okuma-Howa I have, but cheaper sheetmatal, way covers, etc.

Garwood said:

Looks like a machine built for the purpose of school training like those little Emco things that were prolific in the 90's.

I may have a more of the heavier end of Mori machines so I don't agree with the dinky part. The last Yam lathe I looked at looked identical to an Okuma-Howa I have, but cheaper sheetmatal, way covers, etc.

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I didn't mean dinky in the literal sense. But Mori did make some "light duty" budget machines, I believe they were actually made by YCM in Taiwan for Mori and also sold under other names such as Supermax. I have one and it's actually a great machine for what it is considering its on linear rails.

Hardplates said:

I didn't mean dinky in the literal sense. But Mori did make some "light duty" budget machines, I believe they were actually made by YCM in Taiwan for Mori and also sold under other names such as Supermax. I have one and it's actually a great machine for what it is considering its on linear rails.

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What models were those? I know the AL lathes were linear rails, but not familiar with any of the linear rail mills.

I have a couple of the old MV series mills. They're a hybrid of a Timex watch and a 12LB sledgehammer.

Garwood said:

What models were those? I know the AL lathes were linear rails, but not familiar with any of the linear rail mills.

I have a couple of the old MV series mills. They're a hybrid of a Timex watch and a 12LB sledgehammer.

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Yup that's the ones, AL series. I have a Supermax TC-2 (Mori machine with a model number ripped off from Takisawa) which is the same as a Mori AL-2. I was talking about lathes, not sure when it comes to mills.

That lathe is a cnc'd Cadillac manual lathe. Yang manufactured Cadillac. I think Yang went bankrupt and came back as YAM. I don't think there was any relation to YCM.

We have a manual 1440 that is handy as a shirt pocket for dinky little things. Also have a 2280(44 years) and 1740 Caddys that have been workhorses. I have been told Cadillacs are copies of Mori manual lathes, but since I have never seen a manual Mori, I can't say. Webb was a (cheap) copy of the Cadillac.

alphonso said:

That lathe is a cnc'd Cadillac manual lathe. Yang manufactured Cadillac. I think Yang went bankrupt and came back as YAM. I don't think there was any relation to YCM.

We have a manual 1440 that is handy as a shirt pocket for dinky little things. Also have a 2280(44 years) and 1740 Caddys that have been workhorses. I have been told Cadillacs are copies of Mori manual lathes, but since I have never seen a manual Mori, I can't say. Webb was a (cheap) copy of the Cadillac.

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Hi Alphonso,

Yes, it's a Cadillac, or yam, or yang, or goodway - all the same from what I can tell. The base of the lathe says "Yang iron works", and I had read that the basic iron of the lathe was a copy of a Mori design, much the same as you. Sorry if I offended anyone with the suggestion, but that's what I read - most likely on this forum.

The CNC hardware is an "anilam lathemate". The basic hardware is fairly compact, and mostly in good shape.

I'm not sure why the negative comments... Yes, the control is very outdated and will probably be clunky to use. But, that's why I posted here in the first place, to see if it should be upgraded. No, it's not a heavy duty oil field lathe or similar. But I don't need that. It's not a CNC'ed harbor freight 7x14 either.

Lee

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leeko said:

Hi Alphonso,

Yes, it's a Cadillac, or yam, or yang, or goodway - all the same from what I can tell. The base of the lathe says "Yang iron works", and I had read that the basic iron of the lathe was a copy of a Mori design, much the same as you. Sorry if I offended anyone with the suggestion, but that's what I read - most likely on this forum.

The CNC hardware is an "anilam lathemate". The basic hardware is fairly compact, and mostly in good shape.

I'm not sure why the negative comments... Yes, the control is very outdated and will probably be clunky to use. But, that's why I posted here in the first place, to see if it should be upgraded. No, it's not a heavy duty oil field lathe or similar. But I don't need that. It's not a CNC'ed harbor freight 7x14 either.

Lee

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It's a very useful tool when running. It's going to be a bunch of work to get usable. Many people here have been where you are. There's even been a thread here about a FREE, much larger and more capable lathe, that's been going on for over a year, maybe two. The advice you are getting reflects the experience of members here. Looking at effort/time/cost involved to get it going, it might be a better deal to get something already running, or easier to get running. Good luck!

Thanks Mike, I appreciate the honest feedback. I'm hoping it won't take too much to get running - it was touted as running before it was disconnected. I know I have to braze a motor bracket that was broken by a clumsy forklift driver, but hopefully the hardware is otherwise good. If the control works, I figure I'll play around with it before I decide it's worthless the only thing it'll cost me is transport cost (and space).

Thanks again,

Lee

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For what it's worth, factory CNC'd centre lathes with Anilam controls were very common here in the UK in the '80's. Harrison and Colchester both did it, and churned out a lot of them. They were not toys and were capable of everything you'd use a 2 axis cnc lathe for.

My very first cnc was a Harrison M400 CNC, with an Anilam Crusader 2L control. I did a lot of real work on that machine.

However I've never seen a Yam lathe, so no opinion to offer on that. I'm pretty sure a long time member here had one of those though... Wrustle maybe??

alphonso said:

That lathe is a cnc'd Cadillac manual lathe. Yang manufactured Cadillac. I think Yang went bankrupt and came back as YAM. I don't think there was any relation to YCM.

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Could it be the other way round? Every YAM machine I've seen has been fairly old whereas I've seen new Yang machines at trade shows in the past few years, seems more like YAM or the YAM brand is dead and Yang is the one still going.