First off, thanks to everyone for the help contributed so far. I've had a few (maybe dumb) questions and gotten some good feedback.
We make a line of 6061 parts 7-11" diameter, .5-3" tall, imagine the classic flying saucer with a raised center.
90% of the work is done in the lathes, we load stock to do a face and OD turn so we have a clean reference, flip part and do backside rough and finish, flip part again and do frontside rough and finish. After that we finish with a mill op to put in a bolt circle, serial # and cut a profile around the outside edge.
We have two Haas (SL30, ST25) machines running this right now and have maxed out our capacity so we are trying to add some automation to this process. First thing we have been looking into are DS lathes that can handle the part flips for us, maybe even the milling op. Potential issues we've noted are the turret slide colliding with the part in the sub, the price, and the learning curve. Add a robot loader to that and we should be able to double our capacity and then some.
An alternative would be to get two lathes and a robot split between them. Its cheaper than one DS, machines are familiar (except the robot), and we have redundancy in equipment. Downsides are the floorspace, probably going to overload the mill. (We don't need a tailstock so if anyone has a recommendation for a chucker style machine would love to hear that as well.)
What are some other factors not considered above?
Anybody gone through a similar experience and have some thoughts on their decision making process?
Looking forward to some input.
We make a line of 6061 parts 7-11" diameter, .5-3" tall, imagine the classic flying saucer with a raised center.
90% of the work is done in the lathes, we load stock to do a face and OD turn so we have a clean reference, flip part and do backside rough and finish, flip part again and do frontside rough and finish. After that we finish with a mill op to put in a bolt circle, serial # and cut a profile around the outside edge.
We have two Haas (SL30, ST25) machines running this right now and have maxed out our capacity so we are trying to add some automation to this process. First thing we have been looking into are DS lathes that can handle the part flips for us, maybe even the milling op. Potential issues we've noted are the turret slide colliding with the part in the sub, the price, and the learning curve. Add a robot loader to that and we should be able to double our capacity and then some.
An alternative would be to get two lathes and a robot split between them. Its cheaper than one DS, machines are familiar (except the robot), and we have redundancy in equipment. Downsides are the floorspace, probably going to overload the mill. (We don't need a tailstock so if anyone has a recommendation for a chucker style machine would love to hear that as well.)
What are some other factors not considered above?
Anybody gone through a similar experience and have some thoughts on their decision making process?
Looking forward to some input.