Bingo! G80 stops the spindle in our Okuma VMCs so we have "G00 ZXXX" (where XXX is the clearance height) at the end of every canned cycle.

Do you have the DNC-B option? If not, you are out of luck

With RH tooling in a "standard" turret lathe, the cutting forces direct the part DOWN (away from the door) in case of an insert failure or other action that pulls the part out of the chuck, while LH tools direct the part UP (toward the door). This is a minor factor, since I don't expect to be yanking the part out of the chuck on a regular basis, but it is still a factor.

Chip flow doesn't have to go around the tool to get away from the cutting zone; the tool is between you and the piece in case you jerk it out of the chuck; fewer "back side" clearance issues with tool setters; spindle rotates in the same direction (M3) for drilling and turning operations...nothing Earth-shattering, but better IMO C

We run all RH except for our (POS) Hardinge Super Precision lathes, which "require" left hand. Visibility is nice on LH but everything else is better with RH...

You are mixing and matching terminology and I am confused. Are you saying that you're holding the part in the left (main) spindle and interpolating a hole through it? Through it how? in the face of the part, in the side of the part? On center, off center, straight, angled? A picture of the part or a little sketch would be helpful here. I am going to make the assumption that you are putting the hole in from the side at 90 degrees from the spindle centerline and that when you rotate the main spindle 180 to get to the other side of the part it sweeps differently than when you're on "top?" If you sweep the top and bottom of the hole on the first side and its good, but when you swing the spindle around and do the same it is bad, I would say you have a serious main spindle issue. This, of course, assumes that you have inspected the part and that the bore is actually round and straight...

Good luck; if you can, these brokers wouldn't be in business. The only way I can see doing it is to ask for an inspection of the machine so they have to tell you where it is; if you do this, the owner of the machine will be asked not to talk price with you and not to sell the machine to you directly (and won't if they ever want to broker a machine again).

OSP controls (older ones anyway) will do the same thing your Fanuc did; seen it before...BANG

It is about a 5 second parameter change to swap the machine to mm; give it a shot

In the V9 and earlier posts it was done here: dia_mult : -2 #Multiplier for output on X axis (Neg. switches sign of X) Not sure about the mach def era posts

I have [2] "Super Precision" Conquest lathes they can have for the price of the rigging if they're interested; Hardinge, pffffft...

I am sorry but Hardinge CNCs are junk; Nakamura-Tome and Okuma make the only CNC turning centers worth talking about. When you get into smaller stuff companies like Tsugami come into the mix for sure, but for an 8" or 10" machine Nakamura and Okuma will crush all comers.

True dat; our 1980 Sl-2 will still hold .0005 with a little coaxing

Doug, while I agree with most of your commentary, the fact that you work for a company that sells competing machine tools calls your opinion into question for me. I remember when this wasn't the case, and I always respected your insights and opinions, but I doubt very much that you would now say "Mori's machines rock" even if they did; I don't really know what I am trying to get across here, but my piece has been said. C

In my opinion Mori-Seiki has been resting on their laurels for awhile when it comes to their turning product. In the 80s and 90s I think Mori built some really fine turning centers, but I have been unimpressed with what I've seen since then. We have a 2004 (or thereabouts) SL-204SMC (subspindle, M-function, full C axis, barfeed, etc) and the machine can't hold a candle to our Okumas for repeatability or accuracy. The machine is quick and has reasonable power but if you let it sit for 5 minutes you lose size and have to battle for 30 minutes to get it back; we called the Mori guys in and they just shrug. We will never buy a lathe that doesn't say Okuma on the front again; we have [17] of them in various flavors and they are just bulletproof. ZERO downtime for years and years, we hold a couple of tenths all day long even on the [20] year old LNC8s, the OSP takes a little getting used to but once you are comfortable with it you will prefer it to the Fanucs and Fanuc clones all day. C

Are they still Mitsubishi underneath? If so, forget the CAPPS or MAPPS or whatever over the top of it (which, I agree with James, is lousy) the Mitsubishi architecture underneath sucks. I am not a Fanuc fan by any means, but give me an 18i all day over the Mits.

I think that's a little harsh, though I am still running V9.1SP2; we have hundreds and hundreds of programs written using MC Lathe and it works OK for us. C

Martin, why do you use IGF on your PC instead of MasterCAM?

Demos are nice but feedback from guys who actually USE the machine is very valuable since a good salesman can make anything look sweet in a demo. I cannot vouch for IGF because, although we have it in about [10] machines, we don't use it; our management philosophy (which I am in agreement with) is that we program offline. As far as OSP controls; I think that they seriously kick a$$ C

We don't have a Genos machine here, though we looked at one awhile back (ended up buying nothing) and weren't horrified. As far as I know the Genos line is built by a Taiwanese subcontractor but has Okuma electronics and spindle, turret, etc. We are a serious Okuma house with maybe [17] of their machines in production and [2] more inbound; if Morris told us we were going to be happy with Genos, we would buy one. We have [2] Czech-built ZPS / Okuma 30X16 VMCs that have been running day in and day out for [10] years even though they were supposedly "cheap." I think Okuma is too smart to put their name on some POS. C

We have used the serrated inserts that Carr Lane sells for this type of thing before; buy some cheapo soft jaws from US Shop Tools, pop in some counterbores or slots, install the little serrated pads, presto

Does it blow up as soon as it touches the part? Is the plunge diameter in the tool's range (if there is one for a tool that small)? Is the tool on center? Is the tool square to the part? Does the tool make it into the part to a certain depth before it blows up? Can you peck it before that depth? What speed are you running (should be SLOW I'd think)? How much feed are you running? Is the part rigidity good? Is the toolholder rigidity good? Is your coolant concentration high enough? Man there are about 1,000 factors involved in this; did you contact Scientific Cutting Tools?

Are you breaking on the way in or the way out? Small grooving tools often break on rapid retracts; try feeding out and see if your tool survives.

Wear comp does this; reverse wear does the same thing for controls that will only allow positive offset values C

Me too baby; that's why we still run it even though we are on Maintenance and own every subsequent release. That being said, we're girding our loins for the jump to X5