Thread: DMG Mori ALX?

Originally Posted by cameraman

Hardinge GSi series (GSi 150 ) - has a small footprint that would fit your space and cutting requirements (perhaps) ? It's not a gang tool lathe but built like a compact more conventional turning center - wedge -ish (one piece) type casting + hydraulic tail stock if you want it.

Affordable/more affordable plain vanilla offering - chip tray to "Muck out" ,

Not sure of your production requirement vs. emptying / raking out a chip tray every now and again ?

GSi Series | Hardinge

https://www.hardinge.com/wp-content/...0i_1363-1A.pdf

What a neat little machine. I see that the optional tailstock is said to be hydraulic, yet the "naked" pictures in the brochure, show the tailstock mounted on linear rails. Yet, you can pretty clearly see [what I assume are] hydraulic lines going up under the tailstock body. So a solid body, driven on linear rails, and powered by a hydraulic cylinder.

If so, that's freakin' brilliant. This takes the conventional hydraulic powered quill out of the equation, which is prone to clearance & wear over time. And removes the expensive and crash sensitive servo/ball screw assembly from the tailstock body out of the equation as well. Yet, still allows easy positioning of the body itself, without having to manually loosen clamp bolts, and push or tow the tailstock to the new position.

Instead, you get a more rigid quill, and an easier to service linear rails & hydraulic cylinder for positioning, and semi-automatic positioning of the body.

I love it!

Originally Posted by Jashley73

If so, that's freakin' brilliant.

Not to dampen your excitement, but it's far from a new idea. Gildemeister had hydraulic quill-less tailstocks like that on their old CTX lathes close to 30 years ago. Others too I'm sure.

Originally Posted by Jashley73

What a neat little machine. I see that the optional tailstock is said to be hydraulic, yet the "naked" pictures in the brochure, show the tailstock mounted on linear rails. Yet, you can pretty clearly see [what I assume are] hydraulic lines going up under the tailstock body. So a solid body, driven on linear rails, and powered by a hydraulic cylinder.

If so, that's freakin' brilliant. This takes the conventional hydraulic powered quill out of the equation, which is prone to clearance & wear over time. And removes the expensive and crash sensitive servo/ball screw assembly from the tailstock body out of the equation as well. Yet, still allows easy positioning of the body itself, without having to manually loosen clamp bolts, and push or tow the tailstock to the new position.

Instead, you get a more rigid quill, and an easier to service linear rails & hydraulic cylinder for positioning, and semi-automatic positioning of the body.

I love it!

I was happy to have that explained to me ,

That's kinda juxtaposed to how MAZAK "Do it" lol

Brochures is one thing but having someone fight against various persistent and stubborn design deficiencies on a nearly decade by decade basis (in the "field") is super helpful/useful to get feedback on. esp. "clearance & wear ".

Originally Posted by Jashley73

So, my main question - Does your work really require a real turning center, or would you be better served by a Haas TL or Romi style, CNC flat-bed machine?

I'm all for quality Japanese iron - But if the work doesn't require it, then the setup changes on a turning center turn into a real PITA.




Also - It's been a while since I've looked at one, but I can't believe the Haas TL machines require that much floor space. I even looked up the footprint drawing for a TL1, and still can't comprehend it...

HAAS (I think about three years ago or a smidge more ) - They consolidated the TL1 onto the TL2 "Frame" / casting and eliminated the smaller TL1 original shorter / lighter casting.

I totally agree on "Set up changes on a turning center turn into a real PITA.". for an in-lab prototyping type environment.

It's an odd quirk that "hands off" production level machines are less expensive to buy than very precise "Hands on" hybrid manual / CNC smaller machines [there are few exceptions ].

So a really nice turning center like a Weiler can cost as much as production level machine.

Schaublin has some space efficient CNC offerings (new) - not very powerful but very precise also - spendy.

Even Knuth has a pretty awesome Epoxy granite based (good surface finish) hybrid manual / cnc / servo drive based lathe but is super spendy.

OP has tool steel and 6 to 8" diameter requirement ? Otherwise a second hand Hardinge bench lathe HLV type or Omniturn might be a viable alternative.

Even the SHARP cnc knock off of a Hardinge bench type lathe with servo control (Fagor - I think) is over $50K ...

__________________________

20 micron tolerance of OP's / @Trochoidal path - not sure if that's diametrical or part tolerance + any surface finish requirements etc.

Originally Posted by trochoidalpath

This is all prototype, low-volume stuff, in aluminum or 300-series stainless or tool steels. Almost all of my parts fit in an 6" diameter by 8" long envelope. Tolerances are not excessive (0.02 mm is normal).

(I can screenshot some parts if that would help.)

<snip>

If you have a sketched out facsimile of tolerances and materials and sizes / geometries [to post online] then it gives a better idea of the rigidity and torque required for the / a - machine. i.e. what kind of cuts really need to be taken.

I.e. It would be a bummer to buy a sweet little machine then to discover it literally doesn't cut it. Or as mentioned earlier bad surface finishes / chatter is difficult to avoid on certain sizes and materials.

I haven't looked at Tormach's more recent offerings for turning centers. I believe Robrenz / Robin Renzetti has one in his shop but kinda rebuilt it esp. spindle to be more precise for his type of work.

Originally Posted by Jashley73

What a neat little machine.<snip>

I love it!

It is pretty neat , not as super precise as their other offerings BUT it is a one piece wedge type design.

The ALX (DMG MORI) do look nice / very precise but definitely lighter and almost more of a flat bed design versus a heavy wedge.

90% of my work is mill... I hate lathes

I put a Haas TL1 on the floor two years ago. It paid for itself in two months.

Stupid easy to run and incredibly versatile. SO MUCH easier to set up than the production oriented machines I sometimes have to deal with due to the wide open machining area.

Apparently the visual quick code is useful... I’ve seen it, but I program everything on CAM... too lazy to stand at a machine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by trochoidalpath

This is all prototype, low-volume stuff, in aluminum or 300-series stainless or tool steels. Almost all of my parts fit in an 6" diameter by 8" long envelope. Tolerances are not excessive (0.02 mm is normal). (I can screenshot some parts if that would help.)

My number one constraint is space:

the machine needs to fit in something like

a 66" wide by 87" deep box.

There are ~3 ft clear behind the machine in that orientation for service access; if the electrical doors are on the sides the machine would have to turn 90 degrees.<snip>

[/LIST]

I think the new/newer TL1 has a footprint of 86" x 56" .

https://www.haascnc.com/content/dam/...-1_2016-07.pdf

But if you open the operator doors all the way + have cooling tanks etc. it extends to 105" .

Originally Posted by Jashley73

What a neat little machine. I see that the optional tailstock is said to be hydraulic, yet the "naked" pictures in the brochure, show the tailstock mounted on linear rails. Yet, you can pretty clearly see [what I assume are] hydraulic lines going up under the tailstock body. So a solid body, driven on linear rails, and powered by a hydraulic cylinder.

If so, that's freakin' brilliant. This takes the conventional hydraulic powered quill out of the equation, which is prone to clearance & wear over time. And removes the expensive and crash sensitive servo/ball screw assembly from the tailstock body out of the equation as well. Yet, still allows easy positioning of the body itself, without having to manually loosen clamp bolts, and push or tow the tailstock to the new position.

Instead, you get a more rigid quill, and an easier to service linear rails & hydraulic cylinder for positioning, and semi-automatic positioning of the body.

I love it!

I was looking into these and found I could get the GS150F version which comes standard with a bar feed interface and chip conveyor, for only a few thousand more. As it was explained to me, the 150i machine does NOT have a draw tube, but rather draw bar, so it's purely a chucker. You can't put long bars in with a liner and pull yourself even.

Originally Posted by Jashley73

I'm all for quality Japanese iron - But if the work doesn't require it, then the setup changes on a turning center turn into a real PITA.

So... I am a neophyte when it comes to turning, so please excuse my ignorance. But what makes the setup changes hard on a turning center vs a toolroom-style lathe?

Touch off tools, load stock, touch off stock dimensions... what am I missing?

Originally Posted by trochoidalpath

So... I am a neophyte when it comes to turning, so please excuse my ignorance. But what makes the setup changes hard on a turning center vs a toolroom-style lathe?

Touch off tools, load stock, touch off stock dimensions... what am I missing?

First of all preface everything with the knowledge that I hate lathes

The number one reason in my mind is clearance around the tool. Our production machines have tight turrets to maximize the number of tools on the turret and minimize the cycle time. Therefore, it seems like we spend an excessive amount of time seeing what tools can fit next to one another without ramming into the spindle or the Sheetmetal or the coolant lines. In theory this is alleviated by experience and proper planning... but my lathe guy is top notch and been doing it for 35 years and he still ends up fiddle fucking around getting everything set (granted it is usually Y axis/ sub-spindle live tooling bullshit, but he still ends up messing around too much for my taste on setup).

Secondly is the travel. For a relatively small machine the tool room style machines have enormous swing and length for their footprint.

Touch Off should be about the same, assuming the Japanese iron has a touch off probe and a comprehensible routine. Haas is stupid simple and fast. I don't use the probe because I was cheap, but it's still easy.

Part setup on a production oriented machine also seems like a PITA (from watching my setup guy). The production machines have hydraulic actuated collet chucks or 3 jaw chucks. Seems like he is always messing with the stroke, and buying expensive collets, and boring jaws, saying the hydraulic pressure is too high or too low. Runs awesome once he is done setting it up, but it seems like a bunch of horseshit while the spindle isn't making parts. If you just need to make a couple of parts, a manually operated 3-Jaw sure is fast.

Don't even get me started on the cost of VDI tooling, live tools, and collets... Sweet Baby Jesus. I swear I could buy and entire mill for the cost of 5 live tools

Downside is if I need to make more than a dozen parts on my toolroom lathe, I wanna jump off a bridge. It is slow, tool change time is excessive, I don't have a bar feeder or parts catcher, I'm limited to 1800 RPM (cheap), I only have 4 tools in my turret (I cheat this with gang tools if needed), and I feel inferior standing in front of it (but I compensate for this and other things with my lifted truck).

Originally Posted by trochoidalpath

So... I am a neophyte when it comes to turning, so please excuse my ignorance. But what makes the setup changes hard on a turning center vs a toolroom-style lathe?

Touch off tools, load stock, touch off stock dimensions... what am I missing?

Everything G00 Proto said.

Plus, in no particular order..

-Coolant lines & fittings are always a hassle. ALWAYS!
-Touching off to your work is more tedious with a control-mounted handwheel.
-Saftey interlocks will drive you freakin' bonkers during setup. Try running the spindle at 500rpm with the door open, so you can touch off *anything* to the part - On a modern lathe.
-...As opposed to grabbing the -LITERAL- -PHYSICAL- handwheels on a tool-room style machine, and just crank up to the part.
-Tool clearance issues. Especially on drills & boring bars.
-Moving jaws. You are CONSTANTLY moving jaws.
-Cutting soft jaws. Doing it correctly requires a boring ring, long boring bars (again - tool clearance) and some black magic.
-Prox switches on the chuck actuator. These are put in place to check the stroke of the draw tube, to make sure that the chuck is closed, and not open too far, or closed too far. You'll find yourself messing around with these quite often. Especially after you just cut a new set of jaws...



I'm sure there's more.

Originally Posted by Jashley73

Everything G00 Proto said.

Plus, in no particular order..

-Coolant lines & fittings are always a hassle. ALWAYS!
-Touching off to your work is more tedious with a control-mounted handwheel.
-Saftey interlocks will drive you freakin' bonkers during setup. Try running the spindle at 500rpm with the door open, so you can touch off *anything* to the part - On a modern lathe.
-...As opposed to grabbing the -LITERAL- -PHYSICAL- handwheels on a tool-room style machine, and just crank up to the part.
-Tool clearance issues. Especially on drills & boring bars.
-Moving jaws. You are CONSTANTLY moving jaws.
-Cutting soft jaws. Doing it correctly requires a boring ring, long boring bars (again - tool clearance) and some black magic.
-Prox switches on the chuck actuator. These are put in place to check the stroke of the draw tube, to make sure that the chuck is closed, and not open too far, or closed too far. You'll find yourself messing around with these quite often. Especially after you just cut a new set of jaws...



I'm sure there's more.

OK, allow me for a moment please ....

Coolant lines: Not an issue at all! You own a lathe, so turning up the brass balls required to make various configurations of the coolant nozzle is built into the machine.
A 5/8 dia 12' bar will yield enough pieces to hand out at birthdays and weddings even.
If you know what you're doing, switching from coolant through to flood is literally 30 seconds.

Jaw clearance: Agreed whole heartedly, But!!! You may blame the fucking asshole marketing shitheads for that! Those are the assssssholes that apparently DICKtate what is designed and how!!!
90% of the fucking machines available today with standard turrets as-supplied can use only half of the available stations due to clearance issues!
Why? Because sales peeons ( none of them could tell the difference between a lathe and a bicycle BTW) want to be able to tell the customer that their 8" chuck machine has a 12 station turret and it can turn as large as 16" dia!
Even better yet, an optional half-index turret is available if they want 24 toolstations!
Who are you fucking kiddin'!!!
I have a Mori Duraturn 2550. It is a 10" chuck machine that would barely turn 12" dia, BUT!!! It can cut off with tool station 5, .05" from the chuck face, while station 6 is a 2" insert drill next to a 1/4" Micro100 boring bar
in station 7 hanging out maybe .5" from turret face!
OK Mr. Saleswizard, show me a machine in your current offering that can do THAT! Any machine? Anyone? Crickets?
Actually, Haas does have a solution for this as they offer a BMT65 turret without the motor as an available option, and that does in fact give you enough room not for just elbows but also assholes.

Safety interlocks: Unfortunately mills are suffering from the same idiocity.
To fix that perhaps we can line up politicians, lawyers and other do-no-good bureaucrats (perhaps add marketing people in that mix too) and shoot them all.

Moving jaws or boring them - to me anyways - seems no different than changing vise jaws or fixtures in vises. If you stay away from anything Chink garbage chucks and absolute bottom feeder jaws,
then you can re-use a properly bored jaw many times without touching it up.

Prox switches: If you need to dick with those then have a chat with your builder! In 22 years I have never touched any of them, even though every lathe I have has a 3 jaw, 5C and flex collet chuck.
Two of them has a 2 jaw chuck as well.
Not once have I touched any of the prox switches, and they all work properly. ( but then again, I don't own a DMG )

My lathes all have A2-11 spindles with 12" big-bore chucks, or dedicated face-plate fixtures on them, and all are *quite* committed to production parts. Stopping them to dink around with making custom coolant fittings would get me tossed out of my bosses office faster than, well, use your imagination...

Prox switches have always been an issue in my career. On Cinicnatti, multiple Okuma, and multiple Mazak machines - all of them require fiddling if you adjust your jaw stroke even a gnats' ass...

Originally Posted by SeymourDumore

OK, allow me for a moment please ....

Coolant lines: Not an issue at all! You own a lathe, so turning up the brass balls required to make various configurations of the coolant nozzle is built into the machine.
A 5/8 dia 12' bar will yield enough pieces to hand out at birthdays and weddings even.
If you know what you're doing, switching from coolant through to flood is literally 30 seconds.

Jaw clearance: Agreed whole heartedly, But!!! You may blame the fucking asshole marketing shitheads for that! Those are the assssssholes that apparently DICKtate what is designed and how!!!
90% of the fucking machines available today with standard turrets as-supplied can use only half of the available stations due to clearance issues!
Why? Because sales peeons ( none of them could tell the difference between a lathe and a bicycle BTW) want to be able to tell the customer that their 8" chuck machine has a 12 station turret and it can turn as large as 16" dia!
Even better yet, an optional half-index turret is available if they want 24 toolstations!
Who are you fucking kiddin'!!!
I have a Mori Duraturn 2550. It is a 10" chuck machine that would barely turn 12" dia, BUT!!! It can cut off with tool station 5, .05" from the chuck face, while station 6 is a 2" insert drill next to a 1/4" Micro100 boring bar
in station 7 hanging out maybe .5" from turret face!
OK Mr. Saleswizard, show me a machine in your current offering that can do THAT! Any machine? Anyone? Crickets?
Actually, Haas does have a solution for this as they offer a BMT65 turret without the motor as an available option, and that does in fact give you enough room not for just elbows but also assholes.

Safety interlocks: Unfortunately mills are suffering from the same idiocity.
To fix that perhaps we can line up politicians, lawyers and other do-no-good bureaucrats (perhaps add marketing people in that mix too) and shoot them all.

Moving jaws or boring them - to me anyways - seems no different than changing vise jaws or fixtures in vises. If you stay away from anything Chink garbage chucks and absolute bottom feeder jaws,
then you can re-use a properly bored jaw many times without touching it up.

Prox switches: If you need to dick with those then have a chat with your builder! In 22 years I have never touched any of them, even though every lathe I have has a 3 jaw, 5C and flex collet chuck.
Two of them has a 2 jaw chuck as well.
Not once have I touched any of the prox switches, and they all work properly. ( but then again, I don't own a DMG )

Pretty much any radial tool block style turret (BMT, VDI radial) has massively better clearance than a plain stick tool or axial vdi turret.

I have two big lathes with 10 station wedge slot / bolt on bar block turrets, and you absolutely cannot have two bars/drills side by side on those. I have a smaller y axis lathe with a 12 station sauter radial vdi turret, and you can pretty much put anything next to anything in that turret.

As far as prox switches go, can confirm that they are set and forget on DMG, and also on every other lathe I've ever had all the way back to 80's vintage machines. According to member Ewlsey, who I got into an argument about this with, Okuma specifically require constant fucking around with the prox switches pretty much every time you move the jaws. I took him at his word on that, and it's the main reason why I have an NTX on my floor right now instead of a Multus. Can't afford to be wasting time with that kind of shit when you are running 1-2 parts and then resetting.

Originally Posted by gregormarwick

Pretty much any radial tool block style turret (BMT, VDI radial) has massively better clearance than a plain stick tool or axial vdi turret.

I have two big lathes with 10 station wedge slot / bolt on bar block turrets, and you absolutely cannot have two bars/drills side by side on those. I have a smaller y axis lathe with a 12 station sauter radial vdi turret, and you can pretty much put anything next to anything in that turret.

As far as prox switches go, can confirm that they are set and forget on DMG, and also on every other lathe I've ever had all the way back to 80's vintage machines. According to member Ewlsey, who I got into an argument about this with, Okuma specifically require constant fucking around with the prox switches pretty much every time you move the jaws. I took him at his word on that, and it's the main reason why I have an NTX on my floor right now instead of a Multus. Can't afford to be wasting time with that kind of shit when you are running 1-2 parts and then resetting.

Gregor

Pretty much first hand, but Okuma is a prominent offender of the prox switch thing, but as a second hand knowledge, the DMG-s ( the few that I am aware of ) are also in that category according to a couple of guys I know
of running them daily.

The clearance issue, Okuma is once again on top of that list. Customer got an LB3000 that originally comes with an 8" chuck standard, but they upgraded to the big-bore 10" chuck.
You'd think Okuma has enough sense to increase the turret size a bit no? Well, No, not Okuma.
In any case, I have looked at every single 8 and 10" machines that I could possibly walk up-to ( not brochures but hands-on ). Not a single one had the ability to do what the Dura can effortlessly.
I have a part time lathe guy with me for quite a while now. He's absolutely incredible on a lathe ( straight outta school in '79, never held a job other than turning ) but it took him almost a year to stop removing
unused tools from the turret when setting up. His primary workplace is Okuma and Kia.
Yes, the BMT turrets do help with clearance, but the only builder that I know of offering it as a motorless turret option is Haas. For something like a $6K extra, that is peanuts when compared to the endless dicking around.
At the same time I've looked at the standard Doosan BMT65 turret, and all I can say is it can be the little sister of the Haas BMT equivalent. IOW no, you don't gain a whole lot with a Doosan BMT.

With regard to the OP, I am also very curious about this line from Mori as well.
Looking at the construction, these look a little bit like a Dura resurrection. Horizontal linear ways with a linear slant saddle.
The only thing is going to kill it in price is the fuckton of options they're making available. When the Duras first came out, it was the equivalent to a McDonald's hamburger for 2 axis lathes.
Would you like fries with that sir? Except substitute chip conveyor for fries, as that was the only option.
Then came barfeed interface, then milling, then MAPPS and ....
So they went from a 15% premium to a similar Haas to almost double by the end.

In regards to the prox switches on the actuator, I think every machine that I have seen with them has the ability to disable them at the control through either a keep relay or a setting on a custom page. I thought this was common practice, but it sounds like I could be wrong.

Originally Posted by wmpy

In regards to the prox switches on the actuator, I think every machine that I have seen with them has the ability to disable them at the control through either a keep relay or a setting on a custom page. I thought this was common practice, but it sounds like I could be wrong.

On a Mori that is a one-shot deal. You can disable it for setup purposes, but you only get one closure out of it.
Once you open the chuck, the setting reverts back to it's normal state.
But, as stated, if the machine is designed properly, it should not need to be fucked with. Like EVER!

Looks like the ALX is a new replacement for the CL-series.
Pretty sure I had gotten a price on one of the CL's before and thought wtf that's like 2X more than it should be.
So that was that.

Originally Posted by wmpy

In regards to the prox switches on the actuator, I think every machine that I have seen with them has the ability to disable them at the control through either a keep relay or a setting on a custom page. I thought this was common practice, but it sounds like I could be wrong.

I believe our Mazak's allow you to disable prox-switch reading, and read chuck condition via the hydraulic solenoids for the chuck actuator. This does come with risk however. If it's not monitoring for pressure, then you can stand to throw a part from the jaws more easily. Meaning, you can be gripping the part near the end of the chuck's stroke, with very little actual "clamping force" on the part. Then, something goes wrong with the big roughing tool, and bang! - tossed part.

The prox switches sort of force you to be more mindful of the jaw's positioning within it's stroke.