What's new
What's new

Big bore lathe comparison

Kelly James

Plastic
Joined
Nov 15, 2012
Location
Calgary
Our shop is looking for a new/newish big bore lathe with live tooling and possibly y axis milling capabilities. 32ish inch air chuck, 13ish spindle bore and 120ish z length. We will need a steady rest or two as well. The top 3 choices are a mazak quick turn or slant turn 550my, doosan 800l and a hwacheon something or other. Anyone have any suggestions? We are located in Alberta Canada and do a lot of small batch machining/repair work of oilfield components. Big API threads are very common in our shop and we also do a lot of deep boring with devibe bars. Any information on brands or opinions on live tooling with or without y axis capabilities would be appreciated.
 
Our shop has a 2016 mazak 550my with a lbb. This machine is not a top seller and was not without issues for the first year and a half. The machine has some quirks that didn't seem to be fully thought through. I believe just due to not selling the shear volume of smaller lathes it's harder to perfect the ladder and stuff like that. I spent many hours on the phone with applications just hashing out stuff like m codes not working and programming features for the lbb not turned on. The machine is not quite as rigid as I would think for a big 32" x120" lathe. The ergonomics suck with the control and door configuration. The tool eye cant be used with a shaft in the machine. However all in all after the last year it has been running flawless. It works well for what we do. Just some honest feedback after running it for 2 years now. If you would like to know more I'll gladly speak further on it.
 
Thanks for the heads up. We are definitely hoping for rigidity in our new machine. I've heard people say that the addition of the Y capabilities takes away from the overall rigidity of the machine. Any thoughts or opinions on this? The addition of the Y feature has been a topic of discussion.
The LBB feature looks impressive but after talking to our mazak rep he was pretty unfamiliar with it and a few others had said that it had some quirks with it. Once you got it working, how did you find the LBB option? I'm also curious as to what coolant pressure you are running with it.
That control isn't stationary is it?

Thanks for the input! It's definitely nice to get some info from someone other than a salesman.
 
You definitely lose rigidity with y axis. Most of the time that is my highest load reading in the cut. It makes sense because you are using an axis motor to hold a virtual centerline. I can still take .250"-.300" per side in 316ss so it's not terrible weak. If you bump this machine at all it will move. We axed our 25" air chuck for a 25" bison manual 4 jaw. We had trouble keeping parts round with the air chuck. I hated the thing really. Also the mazak is a compound y axis so your axis range is variable depending on where you are at in the x stroke. I love our lbb. We have a 100mm sandvik bar on it. I made a end for it to hold a 3/4" stick tool that will work down to 4 1/4" bores. It programs exactly like the upper turret with a few differences. The control rolls on rails on the doors. Absolute terrible design. Eats door interlock switches because you are constantly pulling on them to swap the control from side to side. I would discuss having the controls put on linear guides down low on the machine.
 
I'm a little biased but the Doosan Puma 800 simply rocks. I work for Doosan, so naturally I favor it, but it is a terrific machine. Very beefy, rugged and accurate. We pour our own castings, and do all the heat treat and grinding in house. Castings are very high quality, dense, mehanite, and beautifully poured. All ways are ground with a gorgeous finish and attention to detail. Every thing is hand scraped in.
Fanuc CNC is standard, usually an 0iT-F or 32iT-B.

With every Doosan, training is free for life. We have classes every month at our Pine Brook, NJ facility. We even have lunch!
 
I would also like to add that I would recommend twin steadyrest if you plan on shaft work. Also buy the tool life monitor option. We dont have it and have really messed this machine up by a part shift while facing it. There is so much power and torque in the main spindle it will really mess things up quick if anything goes south.
 
We have (3) QTS350 lathes at work. If you're planning on doing lots of boring, I'd be suspect of Mazak's iron. This is anecdotal, but our machines have trouble with chatter when boring. I think some of this is inherent in to Mazak using linear rails.

This is NOT a knock on linear-way machines. We have some interrupted facing cuts, and these interrupted cuts sound better on the Mazak's than our box-way Samsung lathes. )(Mori SL35 copies.) All machines have A2-11 spindles BTW, so they're pretty evenly sized machines.

But, I think the linear guides actually make the machines a little "too stiff" for boring tools. With the rails/trucks all pre-loaded, and a pretty rigid turret, there's no dampening in the machine, and thus I think that's why boring bars want to chatter. Maybe some de-vibe bars would do better, but I'd want to see a demo where the take some big cuts, and then finish cuts before writing the check.

That said, if you're doing lots of setups & new parts, it's probably going to be hard to beat the Mazak's control. You get Mazatrol, so they programming would be fast. The graphics & simulation are better/easier than on a Fanuc control by leaps & bounds. The way that work offsets, & tail-stock offsets (and I presume the steady-rest offsets as well) are handled is really convienant.
 
Thanks a lot for the input! This is definitely helping out. We do a fair bit of boring so that is definitely something I will take into consideration. Our shop tends to have a lot of low volume runs and we often end up doing new parts and setups. Having a good controller is likely a huge asset for our kind of work and I've never ran anything better than a mazak for ease of programming and setup. All of my mazak experience is on 4 axis mills with a fusion controller but I've heard great things about their lathe programming and that their controllers have also come a long way from the fusion days.
 
If you have ran a mazak mill the live tooling will program similar on the lathe. It's not the same but the nomenclature and language will still apply. Lathe is easy.
 
Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt because I've never ran any of those machines. I'm just within the same province.
I have a buddy that runs the maintenance department at a pretty big machine shop (also oilfield stuff). Every couple years I always bug him about his favorite machines. Last go around I asked him about Mazak, his reply was they will probably not buy another because the quality just isn't there compared to its competitors. My last shop bought an Integrex right after I left, and apparently it was constantly giving them issues. Lots of people on here might disagree but this is just what I'm hearing from my previous employers.
I think that its only one Mazak distributor in Alberta? I see them running ads for technicians on a regular basis which doesn't bode well with me. Somebody I know even lost an employee to go work for them... they guy has never touched a Mazak and wasn't even a millwright/technician. We didn't understand how he was the most qualified person they could find.
Getting back to my maintenance foreman friend. He likes the Doosans in the shop. Says they aren't the best machines in the shop, but the people who run them don't complain about them either. And they seem to be designed to access and fix them when you have to.
 
I truly believe mazak is trying to hard to be the fit all be all. Way too many models in my opinion. If they didn't have Mazatrol they would be hurting badly. Ours has the same relief beside the headstock as the takisawa.
 
If Mazak still builds the big “Slant Turns”, they are box-way beasts.

As are the big engine-lathe style CNC lathes, which are called “Powermasters” I believe.

Mazak still builds some box-way behemoths, but they’re not gonna be cheap....and they may only build them to order.

Any of the “QT”-named machines are going to be linear-way lathes, that are basically upsized designs from the popular 8/10/12/15” chuck QT’s.
 
I seem to remember someone on here getting a big Mori SL-603 or such for that type of big work, maybe worth comparing to the rest along with whatever okuma offers.
Hwacheon are probably good machines, but they've switched dealer probably 5-6 times since I first looked at them in Canada, that could make getting experienced service/support pretty tough vs some other brands.
Doosan appears to be the best supported out of the Korea builders in Canada, not sure about your area though, I saw a few big Hyundai-Wia's come up for sale out your way though.

I would have thought there'd be all kind of big used/slightly used machines available in Alberta the last few years though, or maybe they've all been auctioned off and sent to the US already...
 








 
Back
Top