mazak vs mori seiki

[Dave.L]

I'm nut sure about today, but just a few years ago Mori still made some Hitachi's, with Mori name plates on them.

[Rick Henrickson The Boeing Co.]

as far as the mori lathe design they copied okuma castings years ago check the okuma LC series Hmm they look very familiar the LC was the work horse of all lathes!

[Chipmakr]

I have ran many differnet lathes over the years and as far as lathe work goes I have never seen a machine more capable of putting parts out the door in a job shop enviroment than a mazak using mazatrol to program.

 

Now I know this is a pretty broad statement and if you will follow along with me I will explain my point of view. Other machines may be constructed more rigidly, other machines may do this thing or that thing better, etc, etc.., but the main goal of our efforts is to put quality parts out the door as quickly and with as least cost as possible.

 

The mazak lathes (atleast the QT18 which I have the most experience with) are made with the operator/programmer in mind. Adjusting the tailstock pressure, chuck pressure etc, etc.. were all within arms reach. Sub programming, bar pulling routines, whatever you wanted to do was easy.

 

Give me a guy thats got some common sense and some knowledge of running a lathe/metal cutting and I could spend a morning with him and walk away with him making parts. What other machine can do this? I have cut inconel, hasteloy, hard turned tool steels, cut SS, plastic, whatever the job it was capable of producing parts.

 

I know other machines might have gotten better insert life and that there are areas where the other machines will out perform the mazaks, but in the big picture of things(ie: getting quality parts out the door as quickly as possible from the time the P.O. hits the door) the mazak/mazatrol combination is the best I have ever seen in a job shop.

 

I like Mori's they are tight machines, but if I could have only one machine and needed to do alot of different parts with few repeats, I would go with the mazak/mazatrol combination.

 

JM2C

[Dave.L]

Programing at the machine in Mazatrol is great for very short run parts. Anyway you look at it, programing offline will get more work thru the machine and while Mazatrol is great, nothing is better than G-Code.

 

We have run our Mori 18 days straight, non-stop and had no more than .0002 difference in any feature on a crappy floor in a non-air conditioned shop. No way in hell could this be done with Mazak. We run our Mazak lathe thru lunch just to keep it from jumping size.

 

And, you can't compare software with hardware. Even if you think Mazatrol is great, that does not mean the mechanics of the machine are. They are simply 2 different machines and anyway you look at it, Mori is better built hardware. Just look at how used Mori's hold there value.

[Rick Henrickson The Boeing Co.]

It is hard to compare machines Mori, Okuma, Mazak I think are all great machines and I think they are all capable of tight tolerance work when used correctly. I have ran +0.000 to -0.003 all day on all of them and yes the Mazak can do it to it is more stable to temp then the old LB10 Okumas but the Okumas would do it to you just had to make sure you left it running if it sat for anytime you would chase toleraces for a bit.

 

As far as throughput I think Mazatrol and IGF are more productive then most cam packages Mazatrol is a little harder to get to do things sometimes "because they do not use G code" but it is faster then offline just program the next job while you are running your current one. IGF has an advantage because you get G code output when you sre done and it makes it easy to tweak.

 

Have them run the same demo on all the machines you are interested in then make your choice.

[mandolinkgn]

I ran Mazaks for years along with 2 or 3 smaller brand lathes. We bought the Mori NL1500 SMCY and my suggestion is buy the Mori. I program it with Mastercam but did use the conversational control for several months. We got it from Ellison in Oregon and had them add the through sub-spindle so we can do really long parts by doing a "shuffle". It will hold .0001 all day long and when you come in Monday it may only be .0001 off from when you shut her down on Friday.

KGN

[Dave.L]

quote:

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It will hold .0001 all day long and when you come in Monday it may only be .0001 off from when you shut her down on Friday.

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Truer words were never spoken