Chris Rizzo, you have mail Jeremy, send me an email: cmoffattATharmonicdriveDOTnet The forum won't let me email [2] people within 15 minutes

Call Renishaw; in my experience they have been very helpful. Even if you have to buy "Inspection Plus" or whatever they call it for your Makino, I remember the pricing wasn't bad. C

Man, I love the backwards "Z" shaped portion with the undercut face! That would be COOL. C

Let us make sure that we're on the same page: if you have good MC Mill experience, getting something going with MC shouldn't be too hard; if you have only CNC milling experience, learning CNC lathe programming is going to take awhile because the speeds, feeds, DOC, orders of operations, adjacent tool clearances, etc, are not always intuitive.

Interesting that MSC came in $35/tool cheaper on Seco than the Seco 'distributor'...hmmm.....?

Workholding.com eBay US Shop Tools Just to name a few; not sure if Huron and Abbott sell hard jaws, but you can check them too

Thanks, guys, I'll check both of those options C

OK, so Seco is more money than Sandvik, Iscar doesn't make Capto boring bars, Canela doesn't make any CCMT boring bars; WTF? I got a call from the Sandvik Regional Sales Manager yesterday saying "I hear you have some concerns about pricing on our Capto tools," to which I replied "I am doing everything in my power to buy Capto toolholding from someone other than you because your pricing is insane." He said "I appreciate your frankness; I'll see if there's anything we can do..." The search continues C

Just got my Seco quote and it was more money than Sandvik, which I find pretty hilarious. Rob, I don't think Kaiser makes turning tools; Martin, I'll check into Iscar.

OK, guys; anybody buying Capto tools that are made by someone other than Sandvik? All of our lathes are Capto, and the system works great, but I am tired of my eyes bugging out when I get a quote from them. I have a quote coming from the Seco guys, but I don't know who else (reputable) is in the Capto business. Any help is much appreciated. C

While the Genos series is a Taiwan machine, so not quite the same as a LB-EX series, I would still buy one every day before a Haas. I have run, admittedly several years ago now, Haas lathes, and I was not impressed. What type of machines do you have now? OSP controls take a little getting used to, but in my opinion it is worth it. We also have [3] LNC8 Cadet lathes that are 25 years old and still hold a couple of tenths all day long. Martin and I are both Okuma guys, I'd say, but it doesn't mean we're wrong. We have sixteen Okuma lathes here, six of which were purchased in the last two years to the tune of about $1.2mil, and we plan to grow our fleet whenever we can. None of our machines are from the Genos family, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't buy one. C

We perform MPI from time to time and typically: Rough turn (say .060 stock per surface, all forged or cast surfaces MUST clean) Heat treat MPI Finish turn Our parts are very high precision, very thin in some spots, and can have no nicks or dents, so we try REALLY hard not to send them out of the building after finish turning. MPI before heat treating seems a little odd to me, but I am not a metallurgist. C

That's pretty bitchin! Is that available for VMCs or only horizontals?

We use Heule as well for most of these situations; sometimes a Harvey double-sided chamfer mill used like Tim says. C

Thanks, Ron, back at you with the same. C

OK, 1) You have 16 posts, and your join date is a month ago, so understand where my "ignorance" comes from 2) I am going to step back from how irritated I am about the tone of your comment regarding how you are going to "excuse my ignorance this one time," and admit that perhaps my Mazak issues have clouded my perception on this one. I'll stay out of this thread from here on, as I have nothing to add, but please don't patronize me again. C

Joe, you've also been a member of this forum for a long time and have contributed much to it, so we have a feel for where you're coming from, whereas High Performance is new member who, with every post I have read on this forum thus far (not just this thread) has been fluffing Mazak. I could be wrong, but I b!tch at the Mori / Nakamura / Okuma apps and sales guys for their lack of objectivity and this fellow seems to be pitching for one team. Like I said, I loathe the Yamazaki Mazak Corporation, but it has nothing to do with T_Malena's post, so I am trying really hard to let folks with direct experience talk to the subject. C

Double post deleted

OK, "High Performance," I am really trying to keep my Mazak experience out of this because it was ten years ago and not really relevant to this thread, but you have been ball-washing the company with EVERY post, so help me out a little. These statements are complete and total bullsh!t in my direct experience; if you want to say the machines are good now, you might be right, but ease up on the "Mazak is a great company" song because I just can't handle it anymore.

Not answering the question, David. Feeding at .5X the nose radius will also break the chip, but you can't hold size or generate the required finish if you're doing something fussy, which is all we do. Rob and I have been doing this for quite awhile and cannot make this "DOC more than the nose radius" thing actually work; if you have succeeded with this I am interested in: material, insert, feedrate, sfm, etc, because I would LOVE to break chips on finishing passes. C

That is certainly what you want to do, in theory, but I have experienced VERY limited success actually doing it, particularly in thin parts. Is this something you have experience with, or just a "rule of thumb?" C

Glad to hear you're squared away; nothing more annoying in the world than RS-232 setup issues

Are you SURE it is on the machine side? What does the Cimco start trigger setup look like?

In my P200s it is Optional Parameter: Program Operation Filename Punch On the newer controls you will not see the program $ABCDEFG.MIN% on the top of the screen in the edit field like we do on our 5020, but that has nothing to do with your issue. C

Then why is there even a question on this? I understand shopping around if you were buying a standalone VMC or something that would just be installed and then you'd be on your own, but for something as complex as you are talking about I think changing horses is insane. Talking about looking to buy trouble, man; I think this is a really bad idea. C