Sourcing aluminum bar stock for Swiss turning

Springy · Oct 22, 2021

Greetings from Canada. My work has a new 1" capacity Swiss lathe on the way, which will be our first swiss machine. Looking for suggestions on where to get good quality h9-or-better tolerance aluminum bar stock (we need both 6061 and 7075). No problem buying from the US. We need a small amount of 416 SS too. Have googled and emailed and called a number of vendors now and found it surprisingly difficult to get straightforward answers.

Another query for the swiss turning gurus - are you using ground stock or cold rolled? If you're getting it ground, are you having it ground to a standard (ie round number) nominal size (eg 0.500") which I think would require an over-nominal size extrusion to grind down, or are you getting it ground down to a slightly below-standard-nominal-size (eg 0.490")?

Any advice appreciated.

MaxPrairie · Oct 22, 2021

Have you tried these guys? I don’t run swiss so no advice there but I do buy tgp/bsq quite a bit.

Alexandria Precision

Springy · Oct 24, 2021

MaxPrairie said:
Have you tried these guys? I don’t run swiss so no advice there but I do buy tgp/bsq quite a bit.

Alexandria Precision

Thanks, I'll contact them.

Anyone else with input on ground vs cold finished for swiss turning?

boslab · Oct 25, 2021

Thought drawn was the feedstock for them things myself
Mark

FredC · Oct 25, 2021

I get my brass bars mostly from Farmers Copper here in south Texas. Sometimes that mention the bars I get are "Swiss quality". Does not bother me a bit when that happens as I can run them without worrying about vibration and noise. Find a supplier that delivers on their own trucks if you can. The freight guys seem to bend about 25% of the bars.

I am not sure what qualities "Swiss bars" have but make sure you ask for it maybe you will get better material.

DouglasJRizzo · Oct 26, 2021

When I ran Swiss type machines I ran T/G/P stock exclusively. CRS just never seems to feed well enough.

camscan · Oct 26, 2021

There is a self adjusting guide bush which works extremely well. If you are doing very close tolerance work then go for ground stock,if not then standard drawn stock will suffice.

GregSY · Oct 26, 2021

Is 'Swiss turning' a thing?

Is a Swiss lathe so fussy it can't chuck up normal aluminum?

TeachMePlease · Oct 26, 2021

GregSY said:
Is 'Swiss turning' a thing?

Is a Swiss lathe so fussy it can't chuck up normal aluminum?

Do you know how a sliding headstock machine works?

Booze Daily · Oct 26, 2021

A Little Bit About Swiss Turning Machines

Springy · Oct 26, 2021

camscan said:
There is a self adjusting guide bush which works extremely well. If you are doing very close tolerance work then go for ground stock,if not then standard drawn stock will suffice.

Thanks - the machine we have coming is not compatible with the self adjusting guide bush system unfortunately.

DouglasJRizzo said:
When I ran Swiss type machines I ran T/G/P stock exclusively. CRS just never seems to feed well enough.

Thanks. What materials were you running?

FredC said:
I get my brass bars mostly from Farmers Copper here in south Texas. Sometimes that mention the bars I get are "Swiss quality". Does not bother me a bit when that happens as I can run them without worrying about vibration and noise. Find a supplier that delivers on their own trucks if you can. The freight guys seem to bend about 25% of the bars.

I am not sure what qualities "Swiss bars" have but make sure you ask for it maybe you will get better material.

Thanks. We might just have to bite the bullet and do our own grinding too.

MaxPrairie · Oct 26, 2021

CRS = Cold rolled steel. You shouldn’t have to do your own grinding. I saw a video where a guy was running precision delrin in his swiss so you should be able to source anything you need.

Big Buck · Oct 26, 2021

I would try Alro steel Corp. In Jackson ,Mi. And its close to .Canada

MaxPrairie · Oct 27, 2021

Big Buck said:
I would try Alro steel Corp. In Jackson ,Mi. And its close to .Canada

We or any of the other shops I talk to have not used Alro Steel for the past year and a half due to outrageous pricing. Everything I have had them quote lately has been at least double anyone else. They don't seem too concerned with not selling material even to a decent sized shop.

dpolseno41 · Oct 27, 2021

I've been running a Swiss Lathe for 7+ years and run almost entirely Cold Finished/ Cold Rolled without issue. Ground stock is nice from the perspective of consistent guide bushing tension but that's a matter of practice and feel to get to a nice in-between tension.

Generally the only time I ever need ground material is when the material can only be had oversized to begin with.

Also I've run a metric ton of run of the mill hex stock without issue. Swiss Lathes are a touch more flexible than they seem to have a reputation for being.

Springy · Oct 27, 2021

MaxPrairie said:
CRS = Cold rolled steel. You shouldn’t have to do your own grinding. I saw a video where a guy was running precision delrin in his swiss so you should be able to source anything you need.

Yeah understood. We're in a location (BC) where nobody local is offering centerless grinding of bar stock. We bought an old sh*tkicked Royal Master centerless for cheap enough to give it a shot ourselves. Probably live to regret that. Prices of ground stock from our usual suppliers are roughly triple standard extrusion - no real surprise I suppose but the cost of grinding it ourselves should pay for itself pretty quick even if we end up having to buy a whole new grinder.

MaxPrairie said:
We or any of the other shops I talk to have not used Alro Steel for the past year and a half due to outrageous pricing. Everything I have had them quote lately has been at least double anyone else. They don't seem too concerned with not selling material even to a decent sized shop.

Thanks for the heads up. There are a couple of suppliers like that here too.

dpolseno41 said:
I've been running a Swiss Lathe for 7+ years and run almost entirely Cold Finished/ Cold Rolled without issue. Ground stock is nice from the perspective of consistent guide bushing tension but that's a matter of practice and feel to get to a nice in-between tension.

Generally the only time I ever need ground material is when the material can only be had oversized to begin with.

Also I've run a metric ton of run of the mill hex stock without issue. Swiss Lathes are a touch more flexible than they seem to have a reputation for being.

That's encouraging. We do have a chucker mode on this machine that it'll probably spend >50% of its time in anyway, so not everything will necessarily be a concern.

triumph406 said:
Check suppliers

Fry's steel lists 1.01 diameter 6061-T6511, that would allow you to grind down to 1.000. I didn't see anything similar in 7075.

McMaster sells ground diameters in 6061/7075, so somebody somewhere is making oversize extruded rod and grinding it. So it's availible, might be possible to do some detective work and find out who their supplier is.

Another issue is finding a good reliable centerless grinder, the ones I used to use fuck up so badly sometimes I've had to go elsewhere, at twice the cost.

That's great advice, especially the McMaster call. I'll check that one out for sure.

aliva · Oct 27, 2021

Have tried ASA Aloys there all over Canada

Springy · Oct 27, 2021

aliva said:
Have tried ASA Aloys there all over Canada

I had not come across them in my Google travels, thank you very much for the heads up.

LKeithR · Oct 27, 2021

Where in B.C. are you? Aluminum suppliers here in the Vancouver area are not much fun to deal with
right now, Prices and minimum orders have gone up and supply and service have gone down. Thankfully
I'm near the end of my run as far as running a shop is concerned--I've got 50+ years under my belt--so
I'm not buying much material right now. I do know several people who are having problems with suppliers.

If you haven't already done so I would do some looking in Edmonton. It's surprising how much stuff that we
buy here actually comes to us through Edmonton. There is more machining and fabrication there than here
on the coast so you might find that suppliers there have better stock than what you can find out here...

RC Mech · Oct 27, 2021

Call Russel or Ryerson. Definitely only call Ryerson- their website is a disaster for Canadian buyers.

I gave an RFQ to ASA Alloys a couple of days ago for several thousand lbs of 6061. The dickhead on the phone said "You don't buy much from us, I'm not going to fill this order when it can go to better customers." No problem, you just answered why we don't buy much from you.

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