Best Small CNC Gang Tool Lathe Under 50k?

I'm looking for a CNC Gang Tool Lathe to run small parts (less than 2 in. dia) for a production facility. We use Omniturns currently, and we're looking for an upgrade. We don't use more than 4 tools on the parts we run on them, so the gang table is nice because we don't have to index when changing tools. We like not having to index a turret, the small footprint of the machine, and of course the price point, but we're looking for something a little more robust now.
Ideally, we would get a machine with the following traits:
- Small footprint (similar to Omniturn footprint of 54 in x 35 in)
- Gang Tooling
- Cost under $50k
- 5C spindle
- Macro and Variable Programming Capability
- Wear and Work Offsets Capability
- Spindle and Axes Specs that are at least as good as Omniturns (>=5Hp spindle, >=4000 rpm spindle, >= 750 lb axis thrust, >= 300 ipm rapids)

I've been doing some research online already and it lead me to a lot of posts on this site numerous times, so I'd figure I'd ask here.

Thanks!

Cubic Machinery'''s Gang Tools

No personal experience but they sure look good, very much in the range i think your looking for.

If the Omni is on a Hardinge, I don't think it gets much better than that. JMO of course, but mine make money all day every day. Cheap to maintain, simple to repair, very very precise, and waaaaaay under 50k.

R

If any of y’all want to sell your used omniturn lathes, I have been looking for a long time. It will be my first cnc lathe, currently all my machines are manual.

A used Hardinge Gt has everything you want except foot print. I have both, the Gt has live tooling, extreme precision, a longer larger dia. bar feed, macros, and work shift.
Work shift and macros have not been a reason to go with the Hardinge Gt in any job we run on it. It is only live tooling, precision, or the bar feed that cause a job to go to the GT.

I did a short run of 100 pcs each of 9 different parts for a PM member, most of the parts were 1/4 diameter of different lengths and one much longer part in 7/16 diameter. At first I wished I had the work shift of the GT on the omniturn, then I programed and set up all of the 1/4 dia. screws to run with one set up and the longer screw took the same tool set up with different offset numbers. I just had to transfer the X numbers to 11-14 from the 1-4 offsets. Set the z on tools for 11 - 14 on the longer bar and done. I sent the programs, videos of the set ups to the customer and he should be able to run the 9 parts in any order with the one set up. He is currently working over a newly purchased machine.

With a little creativity and only four tools and 32 available offsets maybe you can get more out of the Omniturns.

One thing to be careful on using a set up on multiple jobs with different work shifts. Change the program and forget to change the work shift or change to the wrong work shift and you will drive a tool into the spindle.
I am with LitleRob1, be happy.
I guess you could sell one to Alan and at least he will be happy.

alan speyrer said:

If any of y’all want to sell your used omniturn lathes, I have been looking for a long time. It will be my first cnc lathe, currently all my machines are manual.

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There are 4 on the Bay, right now??

R

Texas the second largest state in the USA, and not a single omniturn closer than 1,000 miles away, one way! I may have to do a road trip to buy a omniturn, if so, I’ll wait till the spring, when there’s no snow

litlerob1 said:

There are 4 on the Bay, right now??

R

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alan speyrer said:

Texas the second largest state in the USA, and not a single omniturn closer than 1,000 miles away, one way! I may have to do a road trip to buy a omniturn, if so, I’ll wait till the spring, when there’s no snow

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You're in Texas!!! Thanks for pointing out the size of the State, no one outside of Texas knows that it's the second largest State.

You probably have a big ass pickup truck then, so you can just stick it in the bed. Two grown Texans can lift one Omniturn. Unless you have one of those big ass lift kits famous in Texas. Then you'll need a cow lift.., but you prolly have one in the back of your truck.

I live in Utah, so these people are only Texas wannabes.

R

There was one in Arkansas but I just bought it. There was one in Florida on craigslist might be close enough for you

I don`t know a lot about them but Haas makes a little CL1 gang tool lathe ,, I seen a couple of the older models that haas made in a local shop and they seemed a hell of a lot nicer than the Accuslide I have in the corner of my shop...

I doubt that it will meet your $50 price, but Takamaz gang machines are really high quality machines. Usually equipped with loaders or bar feeders and unloaders. They do have stand-alone versions.

Haas already makes an Economy Machine, their HMC50 with Carousel is an Economy Machine. I wonder what their definition of an Economy Lathe is....

R

Theres a few gang tool machines out there.
Miyano makes and awsum one at least the used too. there older and they can be had for around 5k in working good working condition. I cant remember the model #
a ton stronger than an omni
wasino makes a decent one, takisawi is pretty good. there was one other that A guy had local that I tired to buy a bunch of years ago, moore tool in AZ was selling it for the guy. That was a nice machine and very strong. went and looked at it. (tom doesnt have his shop anymore only sells on ebay I heard but you could send him a msg somehow) I'm thinking it was kia just pulled a search and saw a pic of that.

Omnis are fantastic machines and Like ive said in a previous post we made millions of parts mainly for the areospace electronic industry on them. there best feature on the omni turn is the Air collet which is actually a hardinge brand as the omni turn attachments bolted too.
That air collet was and still is the best for small parts, especially small brass tubing and computer type pins for areospace, along with virgin teflon dielectric parts. it doesn't srew up the small threads when holding on them for 2nd ops or thin wall brass and beryllium copper parts.
most of the cycle times on teflon was 7-11 seconds face,o.d. drill bore and cut off(we used a razor blade mounted to a tool we made). if I had more than a 1-1.5 min cycle time on any part it was to long and would go in a chuck machine.
but remember you have to have the work for it.

its limitations are the RPM and how much stock you can cut as once..Brass alum teflon beryllium and tellurium copper tons of 303 stainless and some others. great up to 1.125 singles and up to 1-1/16 bar feed. steels and everything else it would cut but your DOC was limited.
single piecing bigger parts on emergency collets were good too.. My omnis never failed me made a ton of money were cheap to maintain and had great support from George in Oregon, if I needed it which was very Rare.
also adding live tooling to them was pretty easy.
most people who bought them used them for second ops, we used them for everything primarily bar feed work. and we only ran oil. coolant will f an omniturn up faster than shit. mainly the spindle bearing. I rarely turned over 2500 rpms in mine mostly 1500-2000 rpms. threading was not a problem for class 3 threads it would do them all day and every day, drilling small holes like .015 and even below we used the old brookfield holders. Tapping sucked would just second op the tapping on a tapmatic in hand mill.
you do have to get creative with tooling as there is not alot of room and with a 5/8" spindle center height you didnt have stout tools. we used left handed sandvik ccmt boring bar holders to cut o.d.'s and facing. they dont take up alot of room and were stout.
the cut off station I rigged up a only AHC cut-off slide to one of them to keep the cut-off tool of the gangtool slide we used the cut-off tool from omni as well but a modified version 1/2 sandvik toplock grooving too 3 series.
reversing the spindle is a pain in the but, it works fine but its slow and binds the belts so you hear a clunk. faster to just make the tools work in one direction.
we did cut some big(for that size lathe) dias from sawed blanks like up to 3" stainless steel parts and alum. pain in the butt but they were short pcs so fit in the gap between spindle and table. if blanks for tool long you had to extend your 5/8" left hand boring bore too long and would get chatter, so you had to be creative with homemade tooling. cutting long small o.d. parts were easy with the hardinge (shit forget the name of the tool) had 2 bearings and a small o.d. cutting tool attached to it. hardinge makes some awsum toold for there older AHC's that the omni was made for.
we also made an air spindle brake to lock the spindle for when we put live tooling on it. really simple to do.

if you need a gang tool machine for other material and bigger material I would look for something else,used.
so figure out what your going to use it for, with citizens and other swiss screw machines out and very popular now theres isnt much work for the omnis except second op stuff. I have a older citizen and the omni is for the second op stuff off the citizen but it blew a spindle drive a while back and I need to get that fixed but like I always do thinking about putting a older fanuc control on it. as it has all new bearings and slide bars and bearings/rollers now. not bad since owning them from 92/93 and running them everyday.

Oh yeah for the Op's machine needs, I would look for a 16c collet machine Not a 5c machine like an old hardinge CHNC and just fix it up if needed. you cant go wrong with older hardinge machines they are solid, just add a new control fagor or fanuc if needed and your still under 50k

Nope, both are two far away, the one in Florida would take two days to get there.

sam_stlouis said:

There was one in Arkansas but I just bought it. There was one in Florida on craigslist might be close enough for you

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litlerob1 said:

You're in Texas!!! Thanks for pointing out the size of the State, no one outside of Texas knows that it's the second largest State.

You probably have a big ass pickup truck then, so you can just stick it in the bed. Two grown Texans can lift one Omniturn. Unless you have one of those big ass lift kits famous in Texas. Then you'll need a cow lift.., but you prolly have one in the back of your truck.

I live in Utah, so these people are only Texas wannabes.

R

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Coffee a bit strong this morning Rob? I thought that only us non 'Muricans were allowed to give the Texans a bit of stick

I am commenting to also subscribe to this, don't want to hi-jack but have been thinking about a small footprint lathe for a while... wondering if I can pick up work that the big volume guys aren't interested in.

Haas used to sell a GT20 lathe. I had some interest in that one, now only available used. They also had a smaller GT10. They show up from time to time. Lots of the GT20's show up with a turret, but they were set up to be used as gang tool originally, I believe.

eaglemike said:

Haas used to sell a GT20 lathe. I had some interest in that one, now only available used. They also had a smaller GT10. They show up from time to time. Lots of the GT20's show up with a turret, but they were set up to be used as gang tool originally, I believe.

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The GT series was an absolutely idiotic idea from the ground-up!
It had absolutely no appeal for any purpose as a lathe!
It had a cheesy 12, maybe 15" of X travel, which is why it needed the piece of garbage turret to be useful for anything.
Gang tool, it was certainly not!

OTOH, Haas used to make the MiniLathe, and I can assure you, it is the best design of a gang tool variety, bar none!

If you're running gang lathes, then you know tool clearance is always an issue. Id, OD, or longer drills ... there is always some fucking around to get shit fit.
Well, not on the ML!!!

Just look at this on E-bay:https://www.ebay.com/i/264053546474?chn=ps

Yes, that long slender collet nose is often po-pooed by folks, but if you can wrap your head around the idea and look at the tool plate shape, you will realize
that it has absolutely no clearance issues whatsoever.
I have made my own toolblock to hold 1" stick tools, and tools 1,2,3 and 4 is always an OD stick, while 5, 6, 7 and 8 is always an ID.
The absolute only time I have to remove a tool for clearance is when I need to turn something longer than 2.25", otherwise all tools remain mounted at all times.
Also, I can drill as deep as 7" without ever needing to worry about poking through the back wall!
Try THAT on any other machine!

Now a disclaimer, the Minilathe does suffer a very specific WTF design flaw by Haas Automation!
If you look through the pictures in the 'Ebay post, you will see that the actual cutting forces always occur about 8" beyond the last support of the Z-axis!
Don't know what moron thought that an 8" cantilever is a good idea, but they did it anyway.
Sometimes it takes some incredible finesse to dial out the inherent chatter caused by the overhang.

Other than that though, this freakin' lathe is the most capable for any application that fits into it's envelope.
Having the single slide and no turret, it will hold 2 tenths with absolute ease ( less the variations due to thermal growth )

I really really wish someone ( anyone! ) steals the idea of this gang design and copies it.
Seriously, if it's 1" dia or under and less than 2" long, it goes on the Mini ( unless it's otherwise occupied )
This thing ain't no 2nd-op only lathe!

Seymour, got any pics, or videos of your mini lathe running parts? I tried to send you a PM, but your box is full.
I heard Haas doesn’t support this lathe any longer? They replaced it with the OL-1 lathe, then replaced that with the CL-1 chucker lathe.

Alan

I will try to make a video.
It is actually running a part right now, but only 3 tools.
Hoping to make one where all 8 tools are busy in one program.

BTW, just emptied the inbox, so you're good to send!

Also, the OL-1 and CL-1 are both ridiculous compared to the ML.
First, the ML has a real pneumatic closer, not a joke of a manual closer operated by a pneumatic piston.
Second, it has a 7.5Hp spindle with 3X the size of the OL/CL headstock.
Third, who in the heck thinks an "airplane" door is a good idea on any CNC machinery with coolant?