Best CNC Lathe Manufacturer?

Who is the best cnc lathe manufacturer? I am investing in a cnc lathe & wish to buy a high quality model for my large workshop.

I have been making 5 gauge & 7 1/4 gauge locos for many years on my Myford Super7 & wish to move onto using a cnc lathe for speed & convenience.

I would be grateful for any adivice on good (or bad - ones to avoid!) manufacturers.

How about a Schaublin 110:

or a 125 CCN:

Regards, Frank

Edited By JasonB on 23/08/2013 20:46:07

It depends upon how much you want to spend, and what features you need. For instance:

- Bar feeder and hydraulic/pneumatic chuck?

- Collets, dead length or not?

- Toolpost or tool turret?

- Live tooling, and in how many axes?

Once a specification exists then one can start to look around and compare makes and models.

Regards,

Andrew

I'm interested in how a CNC lathe is going to help you with "speed & convenience" when building locos, unless you're doing volume production.

Whereas a CNC mill can make things that are extremely difficult or even impossible to make by a manual machine, I thought the benefit of a CNC lathe is in volume production; for one-off parts I can't see that there's much benefit. Happy to be told I've got it wrong...

I was looking more for good manufacturers & then I can see what models they have.

I have arthritis my right hand - I was under the impression that CNC would require much less manual work. As my arthritis has deteriorated I have found even simple tasks take me longer than they used to.

The other benefit of a cnc lathe is that my son wants to start making loco's but has never used a lathe and doesn't have as much time as he would like to, so I was hoping cnc would make it faster & easier?!

If anyone has any advise I'd be greatful.

On the point about your son, I'm not sure if the analogy of learning to drive an automatic car without learning how to use the gears applies. Using a manual lathe enables you to learn about feed rates, depth of cut, how different materials behave etc in a way that cannot really be learned from books. I can see the point about the arthritis, we all get tired of endless winding back and forth, even without any associated pain. Regarding manufacturers I have absolutely no experience but Wabeco is the mfr I would look at, having seen some nice looking machines of theirs.

.

I can explain this.

At one time I would have said the same but an encounter with the CNC turner up the road at the Aerospace factory changed my mind.

One day whilst i was screwcutting he called round to borrow something, stood at the door watching and when I'd broke off said "I'd love to be able to screwcut "

Amazed I queried why he couldn't and the reply was he's never used a manual lathe in his life. So I asked how they went on when they got a new machine with a controller they had not seen before.

Answer was they usually got 1/2 days training when it was commissioned and then they were on their own.

I asked him at what revs he screwcut parts and the answer was 2,500 because that was as fast as the lathe went.

Because the carbide tooling could always stand the speed unlike HSS, speed was never a problem so everything ran flat out and feeds / depth of cut were adjusted to suit materials and jobs.

So basically they are no way related but it's just a different learning curve between manual and CNC disciplines.

The debate as to whether you need a background in manual machining before starting CNC has raged ad infinitum on a professional machining forum that I belong to. The consensus seems to be that you don't; from a practical point of view many CNC machine shops do not have manual machines anyway.

I don't have a CNC lathe, as the simpler ones can't do much that I can't already do on my manual machines. I note that Tormach are nearly ready to release a CNC lathe to complement their range of CNC mills. It looks to be an interesting machine; a step up from the small hobby/educational CNC lathes, but simpler and presumably cheaper than low end professional. One down side is that the lathe comes with a cabinet with coolant and electrics, but Tormach are not planning a 230V accessories version. That's a marketing mistake in my view.

On the other hand I've been running a CNC mill for the last 5 years and wouldn't be without it.

Regards,

Andrew