One off items on a cnc lathe

[Torr Man]

Hi all

 

This is aimed at all those with lathes.

 

Can a one off item be done as quickly on a cnc lathe as on a conventional lathe if all the tooling is already set ?

[Chris Rizzo]

Heck yeah.

[mcpgmr]

Faster if your a fast programmer. We are getting ready to implement Mazacam and I have to tell you that it's got to be 10 times faster then a cam system. Does both mazatrol and gcode for just about any lathe controller providing you have a post.

[g-codeguy]

Probably faster if all the tools are already set. Especially if any threading or live tooling is involved.

[Torr Man]

Our Lathes have xxxxor controls which have conversational programming. These controls are very user friendly and you can program in full g-code language if you wish. I am just having difficulty getting the guys in the factory to understand that the set up between manual and cnc will be about the same but the cutting time will be much less

[Chris Rizzo]

Time how long it takes an experienced programmer/operator to generate a good part. Do the same for a fellow on manual equiptment. You'll get an answer.

 

THEN make a revision to the part, or give them a slightly different part to make. Then you'll really start to see the difference and capabilities of programming vs. manual.

 

It all however depends upon the operator/programmer.

[bhayden10]

We run 1 off parts alot on our Mazak lathes using Mazatrol only. The turning tools are basically always in the lathe anyway, but drills etc don't take that much time to put in and teach especially when you always use the same collet holders for drills and small boring bars. If you making a complicated part and get down to the last op and scrap it on a manual lathe it takes so much longer to run another one, but not with the cnc, plus I think it takes more of the chance of human error out of it.

[chris m]

I'd say that it depends on what the part is. Any good manual machinist will be able to turn a step on a piece of stock and face it to length in a shorter time than it would take me to walk into the office and start Mastercam. If your part has a lot of stock to remove, is more complex, or has several tightly toleranced features the CNC lathe starts overtaking the manual machine pretty quick. One of our CNC lathe guys had to take a turn in the manual area because the manual guy was out with an injury and the 2nd piece he had to do was a cast iron plate which required a lot of stock removal; after about half a day hogging away on the manual lathe he said "this would've been done in about 15 f_cking minutes over on my CNC machine."

[Kevangel]

Depends on the part and the equipment, and if running a CNC with lots of hogging on the part is the machinist standing there and just watching it? I have got a engine lathe with a CNC conversational control and a Manual lathe with a digital readout with the tool "set to zero" and that is FAST, for one part. and trav-a-dials.