For solid carbide drills we use Guhring, Mitsubishi, Nachi, and Mikron. We also use the Nachi powdered metal drills. Mikron and Mits are the ones we use for most applications under .150". Nachi gives not quite as good of hole quality compared to Guhring or Mits it seems but is lower cost.

Who do you use other than Harvey Tool for small tools with a variety of reach options, corner radii, and special profiles such as corner rounding tools, double angle cutters, and the like? We have cannot easily get Harvey tool at our India location and I do not really want to have to do customs for these things unless there is no other option.

We have an OGP Smartscope for only optical but a Zeiss O-Inspect that is a combo machine. I know that according to our QC guys the Zeiss better vs the OGP for optical measurements, but the OGP is a little faster for stuff without a program.

And if you are doing much roughing and tight tolerance finishing it probably wouldn't perform so hot.

I wonder how aggressive you can really cut with that before the spindle rigidity in that rotational axis becomes a limiting factor. Looks fun regardless!

Back turning it may help too

Big Kaiser Mega E series is what we use for a lof of the small tools with minimal runout needed.

We have a quick change receiver on all our 5 axis machines. We use the Shunck Vero S on ours. Helps keep the spindle running by minimizing setup time. For tool holders we use Big Kaiser holders for 90% of the tools. Without knowing more details, I'm not sure what else to say

Okuma America is going to be demoing Y-Axis parting at IMTS it looks like. If that is the case, I bet we will be seeing a good solution soon.

If i am understanding the question correctly, I have had better success with milling cutters like that on a face-mill arbor than ones on a Weldon shank.

We use IMCO solid carbide for the 1/2 and smaller sizes in 17-4 and 15-5PH. They have a IPC7 and 9 line that we have started testing on a few jobs and they are looking promising.

Does it have an RS232 port on the back?

Even the Haas boxes can do that (from what I've seen)

I have a 'koma 4/5th axis table on a VMC and it performs great. They are usually my 1st choice.

I do a pretty similar approach to this. I do have a spot in the program where it sets the absolute value for Z (VZOFZ=123.4567) as a safety, and then does the shifts after that.