Recommendations for used turning center for running small parts unattended?

Hey guys!
I'm slowly starting to look around for a small (used) turning center and I'm interested in recommendations...

All my parts would be made from a 1" bar or smaller, usually in the 1/4" or 3/8" diameter range. Part length will usually be under 1/2". Material will mainly be stainless, preferably pre-hardened like 17-4H900 or similar. Initially I don't forsee any need for live tooling but I wouldn't rule it out in the long term, definitely not a 'must have' as I'd be happy to just run that as a second op on my mill alongside other parts on my production fixtures.

All the parts made will be for use in my products so cycle time is not really a huge concern as I'm pretty sure any turning center will produce far more than I can use. I would like a bar feeder or bar puller though as running unattended is very important for me! I'll likely only be feeding short bars, 4' or 6' as it makes material storage/handling/delivery easier and my parts will all be very short so there won't be much wasted stock.

I'm happy to program in CAM or at the control as long as programming at the control is not a headache.

I would like to do maintenance myself so something simple with easily accessible parts/diagrams is a plus. 'The fadal of lathes' would be just fine with me

Current leads:
Miyano BNC34T: Looks like it could use some TLC, but overall I like the concept and size!
Okuma Cadet LNC8: The machine looked good but I'm not sure if the 8" hydraulic chuck is simply going to be too large for most of my work?
Okuma LB15: This one looks very nice, price is reasonable too, just not sure if it's going to run small parts well.

I'm thinking to also get a larger manual lathe for my one-off parts like automation components and so on, that way I don't have to break down the production setup on the turning center.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
-Aaron

If the parts don't need lots of tools with this kinda size range a gang tooled setup might be the best bet, there just so much more simple and its easy to have tools preset in blocks for differing part families, couple of pins and screws and recall a programmed and you can be up and running bits fast. Topping out at one 1" parts makes some flavor of collet a natural choice too not a chuck, less mass to spin up every-time.

Short bars are nicer to handle, trade off is you have to then cut them and deburr the ends well to get most bar feeders to truly perform with out jams, hence im in the 12' bar camp if you can shoe horn it in, still plenty light enough to make for easy handling. IME its only once you go over the 1"+ range that manual handling weight wise becomes a ass for full 12' sticks.

Hey Adama!
Yeah I've been keeping an out for something like a Hardinge GT27, but unfortunately I have never seen a single gang tool lathe come up for sale near me... On eBay they always seem to go for $10k plus as well, I had hoped that they'd be cheaper! It's a good point though, no turret indexing mechanism to go wrong, much simpler overall to maintain and hopefully to setup. I will start looking for one a bit more seriously to see if there's anything local I can scare out! Thanks!

One thing I hadn't thought much about is that I guess I could put a 5C collet chuck on a larger machine like an LB15... I assume they have ones that will operate hydraulically the same as a normal turning center chuck?

There is a pretty nice looking LB15 reasonably close to where I am. Comes with a large stash of spare parts too which I like.

Im a Miyano guy so Im gonna recommend the BNC-34T. Dead simple, super reliable. All standard Fanuc electronics. Ran a lot of them in my past life with Iemca auto loaders. Routinely got 8-12 hours of lights out run time. Small brass parts, tool life wasnt an issue.

Biggest issue with lights out is running low on coolant or how you handle the parts coming out of the parts conveyor. Sometimes a part would get locked sideways in the conveyor. If you got lucky parts would accumulate after 10-20 cycles and jam the parts catcher. No big deal and the machine would alarm out. If you werent lucky the machine would still run all night and you had to pick 400 parts thru the material scrap and machine casting.

I got very good at even running steel and alloy steel parts lights out. Divided a turned shoulder into 2 or 3 WNMG inserts just to share tool life. Instead of pecking every .3 Inches I would peck every .15 Inches just to keep chips small. Used multiple drills, multiple boring bars, Even had multiple single point threading tools doing the same thread. Most of my machines had cut-off confirmation so that also helped in case the cut off tool took a dump.

I have some of each of those machines. The Miyano is quick but is definitely a light-weight compared to the two Okumas.
We run production brass parts on our BNC 34T (three bar/chucker cells...6 machines total). We recently purchased a new Okuma Genos to run the same type of parts...bar/chucker cell. The old Miyanos outproduce the new Genos. But, if it was a head-to-head battle with stainless material and heavier cuts then the
Miyano would easily begin to show its limitations.

The part catching system on the Miyano is much better suited to smaller parts compared to the basket style catcher on the Okuma (I've never seen a standard Okuma system on an LB-15 but our Cadet and some Crowns do have them).

If you are looking for rigidity and power then the Miyano needs dropped off your list immediately. All depends on the types of cuts you will doing on your parts.

Given the Miyano has come up, never having seen on in person, does the rear turret move off axis? In other words, strictly a drilling/reaming/tapping type tools on X0, or can you bore with it?

I don't have any experience with Okuma machines but for a machine with a 34mm thru hole the Miyano BNC34T can take a decent cut. On a wnmg insert .250" per pass in diameter at .014 ipr cutting 4140 or 8620. Not mindblowing but very capable.

Brian said:

Given the Miyano has come up, never having seen on in person, does the rear turret move off axis? In other words, strictly a drilling/reaming/tapping type tools on X0, or can you bore with it?

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The turret stays on center. So you can drill, tap, c-bore, Any type of boring would leave drag marks on retraction.

Aaron, Im assuming your looking to turn pins for your blades?

Number 1 I would look at if I were you.... Omniturn gang tooled lathe with a pneumatic bar feeder.

macds said:

Aaron, Im assuming your looking to turn pins for your blades?

Number 1 I would look at if I were you.... Omniturn gang tooled lathe with a pneumatic bar feeder.

Click to expand...

I'm actually making the pins on my mill now which is working out pretty well! Made up a fixture with reamed bores and a right angle set screw for each bore, then I'm using dowel pins (304 stainless) as my 'rough stock'. That way I can basically just trim them to length and make the bore that I need, seems to be working pretty well so far!

I haven't spent much time on the Omniturn website before, but after combing through it I really like that they seem to offer a full list of repair/upgrade parts right on their website along with prices and everything! That's really nice! I will definitely keep an eye out!

I hate to be a Kpotter.. (actually, no I don't)..

If you are producing what you need now on a MILL.. Buying a lathe isn't going to do much for you..

If I were you (and I'm not).. And I've seen your vids, you even pop as a YouTube channel on my TV.

Get somebody with a swiss to knock out a huge pile of them.. From what I've seen you aren't going through a Brazillion of these things a year.. Different diameters and whatever, lengths (you can chop that).. Buy the material up front, pay COD, have them toss them in a bucket, not deburred and dirty.. You can probably get 10 years worth of pins for what you would pay for a decent low dollar lathe...

Concentrate your time on what you are good at... Which is making cool knives.. (or coming up with new cool knives)..

I understand wanting to do it all yourself.. And some day, a lathe may make sense.. But you have a skill and only so
much time... Use that time to be skillful, not making piss ant little pins that anybody can make.

Hey Bob!
All good points, and things I have been thinking about a lot... I want to bring more things back in house over the next few years, but I'm most concerned with 'mission critical' things like heat-treatment. Thinking about turning centers is mainly with knowing what I want so I can keep my eye out for a good deal!

I actually tried to farm the pins out initially, but I struggled to get responses from any shops. I guess the quantity/margin was too low.

Ideally I'd like to have the capability to make all this kind of stuff in house, then farm it out if it makes sense. That way I can cover for supplier issues when needed, as opposed to just being stuck.

In a lot of cases it would also be good to have the equipment (or manual version thereof) for prototyping. For instance I've also been looking at 3 axis CNC surface grinders, which I think could do a lot of my stock prep for me, but also bring something new with contour grinding capability...

One additional factor is that I think it's important the my customers see me doing as much in house as possible. I don't want to go crazy (like making my own steel) but if I can be as 'single source' as possible I think that will be a good thing.

Last factor (the main one): I also find learning new techniques really interesting, and it's something that will get me up in the morning! I'm quite comfortable on a manual lathe but I've never done any CNC turning and it's something I would like to learn! Ultimately I want my shop to have 2 sections: the production shop that is optimized for production flow and that's all, and then the prototype shop that has just about every capability under the sun Not that it will all get used every day, but I am definitely the type that likes to turn my hand to as many things as possible and learn new skills! Plans are already underway in this direction, with the 2 new Fadals being slated for production, while my current machine will become my prototyping VMC.

Can't comment about own steel, but i now reroll circular ERW into non round shapes to match old unavailable sections, productive hell no, but it sure makes it near effortless to carve out a niche in a marketplace were no one will compete with you. To the best of my knowledge no one else is doing that as far east as i am in the uk, the product range its opening up though is showing so much pottential too.

As to the farm it out crowd, honestly generally farming shit out takes me more time than it would to DIY most times. Quality is always disappointing too, very few job shop places give a shit about quality and appearance, polishing rusty finger prints or rain drops of parts cut out of bright steel sheet is a major time suck.

Yes gang tooled lathes are thin on the second hand market place, never really understood why either as theres several out there, they just don't seam to come up all that often. Im still in the process of making my own from the ground up to fit a very unique neich i have to fill - space i have to fit the machine in. My case i need it to make not just production parts but strangely profile rolls for the above tube job amongst other things, i also don't need the power of most production class lathes with the swing i need or have the space - electric to run them. Problem in my case has been other works been so full on the project keeps getting bumped back. Then im back to manually running stuff it would make me!

I see someone already mentioned, but I would second looking into an Omniturn if it will do the job for you (smaller, gang tooled, etc). On the automation side it looks like they seem to have nicely priced options there with the pneumatic magazine bar feeder. I wish I could find something that small/cheap that bolts onto any smaller lathe. Same would be nice for a low cost gantry robot. On the omniturn side they have a pretty cool track-loader as well, if that would work for you.

I'm not too sure about the control system, I guess it's a custom built computer from the looks of it. When you get down to it, that's probably all the big name control system are. From the limited research I did, they do seem reliable.

too bad you are so far away,

I have an Omniturn GT75 that I'm selling as a parts machine
needs spindle rebuilt and a little tlc.
kind of like the Fadal, of lathes except its fast

the controllers are dos based, the one I have
originally worked with 2 floppy disks, think back to the 286 and 386 days.
most have been upgraded to internal hd.
the controller plugs into a standard 110-120 outlet,
that runs the computer, the servos and solenoids,
spindle motor is 220, and can be run on single phase.
just need air and 220 power. no hydraulics

they are light and compact slide a pallet jack under it an move it where ever.

you don't see a bunch of them for sale used because they are easily rebuilt.
and if you need to make small pins or even fittings they just keep
spitting them out.
very much niche machines

These those +/- .00025 pins?

m98custom1212 said:

These those +/- .00025 pins?

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Tolerances on the OD and bore were one-sided, -0.0005" on the OD, +0.0005" on the bore. Could be they were just too tight to make cheaply, which I think is what you you're getting at.

That's one of the other issues with farming out... Sometimes I don't know exactly where I can be looser with my tolerances until I've assembled a few and see how they feel/look etc... Making those pins here I immediately dismissed the need for a flat bottom bore and loosened the bore up to -0.000" +0.001" and did them in one shot with a nice carbide screw machine drill. The OD is still tight, but I get that for 'free' by using dowel pins as the rough stock. I wasn't sure if that would work but it seems to work well, and I'm sure if I re-quoted now I would get more takers. But I feel like learnings like that are much more expensive and much slower if I have to farm things out...

72bwhite said:

too bad you are so far away,

I have an Omniturn GT75 that I'm selling as a parts machine
needs spindle rebuilt and a little tlc.
kind of like the Fadal, of lathes except its fast

the controllers are dos based, the one I have
originally worked with 2 floppy disks, think back to the 286 and 386 days.
most have been upgraded to internal hd.
the controller plugs into a standard 110-120 outlet,
that runs the computer, the servos and solenoids,
spindle motor is 220, and can be run on single phase.
just need air and 220 power. no hydraulics

they are light and compact slide a pallet jack under it an move it where ever.

you don't see a bunch of them for sale used because they are easily rebuilt.
and if you need to make small pins or even fittings they just keep
spitting them out.
very much niche machines

Click to expand...

"Except it's fast" haha, yeah I bet that thing smokes a Fadal on the tool-change

Well if you're still trying to sell it in a couple of months let me know, at that point I'll have more cash and could entertain the idea of getting a machine across the border. Haven't done it before, but I can imagine it's a bit painful!

If od matters that much, may be light years ahead getting center-less ground rods in and just do the ID work, yes most lathes will hold sub half thou work but start to get much tighter than that and it needs more checking and becomes less of a background kinda job.