What's new
What's new

Any experience with a new CL-1 chucker lathe?

JFI

Plastic
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Location
Rapid City, SD
Hello,
We are wanting a new lathe, and this CL-1 chucker seems perfect for us. Does anyone have experience with one?
We currently run an older Hardinge HC manual chucker, but we would like to go with something new and CNC. We have 3 Haas Mini mills in the shop, and also a Citizen B-12 swiss machine.

We make small gun part runs of about 50-200, and the sub spindles on the CL-1 will save huge amounts of time for us.

Any experience or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, Brian
 
The pictures of it are under the "build and price" tab. Here is their description of it.

"Live Tooling with C axis; dual ER-11 spindles, 6000-rpm max. (peak torque at 3000 rpm), 200 W brushless motor, ER-11 collets accepted 1/16” – ¼” (1 mm – 6.5 mm) tools"

It also indexes the main spindle, and allows for interpolated cutting while the spindle is rotating.

Brian
 
I have seen some of the older Haas 5c chucker lathes and they seem like nice machines ,, I have a new ST15 with a bar feeder and it runs great ,,, its not a power house but I only want it for small bar feeder parts so it does a good job ..

FYI
I have seen a lot of the Haas chucker machiones on the used market at vary good prices,, I get a feeling a lot of guys buy them and think there a big machine in a little box and turn around and sell them ,,
 
Thanks for the reply.

It will mostly be used for making small firing pins. Rarely over 3/8" diameter O1 steel. The live tooling will be for small cross holes, flats and slots. We are usually pretty gentle with light cuts here.

We have had really good luck with the 3 MiniMills in the shop. We are hoping this new machine will be similar. I was hoping to hear from people who have run them for a while to get a feel for the reliability and ease of use.

Brian
 
Haas shares a lot of parts between there machine models ,, it well be the Same control if you have the 2017 or newer mini mills with the nex-gen control ,,, there lathe control software is just as user friendly as there mills if not more so ,,,, most lathe parts can be made with canned cycles.

As for reliability ..
There not Okuma or mori Reliable , but there also not at there price point. I run Haas machines every day and have had a handfull of LED lights changed and one auger motor go out in over 5 years. and all of them were covered under warranty.
 
Hello, long time lurker and first time posting here.

We bought a CL-1 about 6 months ago and love it. We got ours with the live tooling option as well as the bar feed(pusher), parts catcher and the auto door.

Many of our small parts required secondary milling operations for crossholes & such and these were like 30-40 second operations in an indexer. Being forever short on manpower these secondary opps were killing us.

I was leary at first thinking it was just a toy. It's not the most rigid machine but for the right parts it's great. Easy and quick to setup. Incredibly accurate to the point that it's almost boring rarely having to make offsets. Gang style holders for drills and boring bars help save a bit on cycle times too. Just a fun machine to operate.

The simplicity of this machine is what drew me to it. Yes there's plenty of work it won't do but for me there's an awful lot that it will do. Oh and it doesn't leak a drop of coolant on the floor which is WAY more than I can say about our other Haas machines...

If you like PM me and I'll send you a link to some videos of our machine making parts.
 
I've not got a CL-1 but an OL-1 which is the pure gang tool predecessor to it, I have mixed feelings about it.

It's certainly a nice compact lathe, it's extremely quiet running, uses next to no compressed air unlike a lot of other similar sized 5c spindle lathes due to the collet closer design, the rapids are almost unnecessarily fast, I've not had chance to use mine much since I got it late last year but so far accuracy/repeatability seems excellent.

I looked into buying one years ago but the price for what it was imo was too high, the Haas rep I spoke to thought the same except for in specific applications where the size was a big benefit. I don't know what the CL-1 costs but I can't imagine it's less given it's a more complex machine, I only got the OL-1 because on the face of it the price used was good.

The spindle motor on the OL-1 is a servo motor, approx 1hp so I would be very suprised if the CL-1 actually has the 5hp spindle motor their spec sheet claims, I would be interested to hear from a CL-1 owner what it actually says on the motor data plate/sticker.

As mentioned the collet closer uses near no compressed air however it's less forgiving with varying stock diameters, not an issue when I run alu but when I run plastics I'll be having to break out the manual 3 jaw chuck which will probably get old fast, fortunately I also generally just do short runs.

The CL-1 has the bar feeder and parts catcher which weren't options on the OL-1, it also has a CHNC style turret which imo isn't such a good thing. It's half gang tooling and half turret with a lot of the worst bits of both (more complex, more limiting than a conventional turret on a slant bed), I think it's a shame they dropped the pure gang tooling design entirely when they released the CL-1 because an OL-1 with the bar feed and parts catcher could have been a really good lathe for certain applications.

What is the reason you're looking at a CL-1 over say a more versatile slant bed lathe? If it's size then I personally would be looking at the option of an Emco E25 or another small gang tool lathe if the parts could be made on one, iirc the base E25 costs about what the OL-1 used to and as an owner of an Emco Turn 325 as well I would say the Emco is a better built machine.
 
Emco Maier makes a superior machine but their service has made me say NEVER AGAIN.

Hopefully that changed since I last called them for service some years back, by the end of my trying to set up a service call I decided to put that service call towards a down payment on a new Haas.
 
Emco Maier makes a superior machine but their service has made me say NEVER AGAIN.

Hopefully that changed since I last called them for service some years back, by the end of my trying to set up a service call I decided to put that service call towards a down payment on a new Haas.
That is where Haas definately wins (at least in the US).

Here in the UK who you'd call would depend on what you're having an issue with, there is Emco themselves, then for turret issues another place, if you have a Fanuc control you can call.. well, a lot of different people. Maybe being in Europe means better service, but by that logic being in the US a Haas could well be a wise choice.
 
Here in the UK who you'd call would depend on what you're having an issue with, there is Emco themselves, then for turret issues another place, if you have a Fanuc control you can call.. well, a lot of different people.


Call Emco as Control won't fire up, they call Austria, Austria calls them back to tell me to call Siemens as its their board being flakey, call Siemens they have a question for Emco, Call Emco, they tell me to open control back to get info, Call them back get info, call Siemens they no longer have That board in stock but a similar board but need to check with Emco, Call Emco they don't know, they call Austria, Austria says ok, Emco calls me back says ok buy that. I call Siemens to order, they no longer have "That Board in stock but have a new board at twice plus the price...Now I've been down calling and waiting for over a week, the $1200 board is now $2800. If I do not get an Emco Tech to install...I own the board. Emco Tech is not available for at least 10 days...

I won't even go into the Sauter Turret problems.

Spindle fluctuation problems...days and thousands with a tech here calling EMCO and Austria to finally say "We do not know, send machine to Ohio to fix". Yeah, I'll pack up that 5000lbs machine and call FED-EX to ship...
Actually fixed that last problem with help from a PM Board member that stepped up to help. Spent an evening on the phone with me troubleshooting from Step ONE, Check Power at Breaker Panel, Check Power going into Transformer, Check Power coming out of Transformer, Check Power going into Machines Wire Taps BINGO Transformer wire taps were set up wrong. Right on the Fringe...but wrong.
 
service is a big issue. that is another reason for the haas. they just put a tech 30 miles away, that we really like, so there's that.
and my lathe is running late. so soon ill be cutting chips...
 
It is great machine, we have been using it for almost 2 years now.

It has some great features and some short comings.

For the features:
- NG control is spot-on, it is a great help and we use it for both prototyping and small series.
- bar feeder is working well
- live tooling is good for drilling
- gang tooling is working very well

Regarding flaws:
- Number 1 and the biggest flaw is absence of a tail stock. This is limiting the use of the lathe greatly. In case it had a tail stock we would have bought more by now.
- 2nd flaw is that live tooling is fixed in up-down direction, it can not move up, it is always in the same line and can move only left and right, this is slightly limiting its use
- 3rd flaw, the intuitive system does not work well with live tooling, it is known problem, but still not fixed in April 2021
- 4th flaw, the switch for indicating closure of the main doors is faulty, we are bypassing it, it is not working well
- 5th flaw, the small door is tool small for practical use so we always open the big door for lathe operation.

Outside of this, if you are only making small and short parts, look no further. Also if space is the problem, I am guessing in the US you guys don't have that many space limitations. This lathe can comfortably fit into a garage, if you buy without bar feeder.
 
Just dont expect to be drilling 3/4in holes in a 1in titanium round stock, and you should be fine.

Its funny you mention emco, I bought a small pc50 lathe for us at work to make small parts, it works great, but the manual is very confusing as its translated from german, and I end up doing all the maintenance myself.

Ive seen the larger emco lathes, and they look nice, but considering the fact you already have a haas mill, It would be worth sticking with that. The bar feed option is great.

Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk
 








 
Back
Top