Machinist question on turn & mill CNCs
 

I know we have a few master machinists here, so I value your opinions. We have a potential new project and we would need to buy/lease a turnkey turn & mill CNC. We have already met with Mori Seiki and I want to be sure we meet with a few other industry leaders. Which manufactures are tops in this equipment area? Thanks guys,

hitachi-seiki.

Have you seen the number of auctions lately? Why would you even consider buying new? There are hundreds of cnc machines out there dirt cheap.

That's a fair question. This a unique situation where production guarantees are required and the purchase of a dedicated turnkey machine is a deal breaker. The product is extremely complicated and my customer wants "guarantees" from not only us but the equipment mfg.

The project will/would be very lucrative and we can't afford the time or risk of trying to piece meal a pre-owned setup together. The machine really needs to hit the floor running.

Thanks I'll look into them.

You really make no mention of the size of the part, what you are turning, expected volumes, tooling requirements, do you need dual spindle or live axis, bar feeder...?

Bang for the buck accuracy vs. productivity nobody beats Haas Automation.

www.haascnc.com

What do you plan to do for CAM software, of anything?

The part fits within an 18" x 2.5" x 1" window. No bar feed, this would be a fixtured setup, 4130 material. Volumes are ~5k-10k parts first year ramping to 25k in three years.

I am not the machinist in our company, I know just enough to be dangerous and maybe not even that much:) I just need to set up meetings with a few industry leaders so we cover all our bases and get the best possible information not only for us but for my customer.

Lendaddy, I don't know alot about high end machining centers other than we have a few relatively cheap Fadals on our shop floor....so no help from me on the hardware.

I am wondering however, how you can expect to make money on this job compared to an already established machine shop? IOW, are you sure this job will pay for itself? I know the company I work (special machine building) for can't compete with an actual machine shop when it comes to mass production machining even though we a good variety of machines.

In that case Haas. Pick a model, agree on a price, then have them make samples for you as a condition of issuing a PO. That will verify tolerances, tools, and cycle time. You should be present for the run.

I guess cash flow prevents you from buying outright?

The director of the project is a friend of my fathers. This does not mean there won't be any competition exactly but we just received a non-binding letter of intent today. We have target numbers and so far it looks very good. I have to nail all the numbers down securely before we move and this is a big part of that.

I'm not sure I understand the second part, this would not be a custom built machine. The programming and fixtures are the turnkey components.

We certainly will have to finance the equipment and having production/capabilities guarantees(or as close as is reasonable) from a world leading mfg will help in that department.

Does Haas still have a good name? I've heard bad things about "designed in America/made in China" in regards to them.

CNC Music Factory?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1196179952.jpg

Please, please, please read any proposed lease very carefully. Equipment lessors make used car salemen look like saints. Most equipment leases are tremendously skewed in favor of the lessor, have all sorts of almost unconscionable provisions.

Pay special attention to the "end of term" provisions. Those are the provisions that deal with how and when the lease ends, and what happens when the lease ends. That's where they normally really stick it to you. These provisions are often intentionally vague and confusing.

Also, do not rely on ANY oral promises. They will flat out lie to you, and the lease will have an "integration clause" saying that only the written provisions govern, and there has been no reliance on any oral promises.

Leasing companies can really stick it to you. I've seen competitors of my businesses end up making $200K in lease payments for equipment worth maybe $20K. One poor lady leased a credit card processing machine (the thingy that you slide the credit card through) for something like $7500 for 3 years, and I was told you could buy the silly machine outright, brand new, for a few hundred dollars.

Carefully read, and fully understand, ALL provisions of any lease you sign. Really understand how the end of term options work.

You will not be dissapointed with a Haas, they Rock;) Plus service and support are fantastic .

My Haas dealer, Productivity, Inc. in MN has been fantastic for service and applications engineering support. One thing to bear in mind with Haas is that the parts come out of California (not overseas) so in the rare event that something goes down it can be overnighted and installed next day. Most of the servos, belts, control boards, etc. that could fail are carried by most of the service guy's trucks already. If you are able to buy a Haas outright, the resale value a couple of years later will still be very high- that's why used ones are either completely worn out and 12 years old or they are 2 years old and only a few thousand off new.

I would not buy new. I would be looking at used Haas or Fadal machines.

My understanding was that Haas had a very good name. Even Jesse James uses them. :rolleyes:

I have a Takumi, it has performed very well over the years. And a cheap Chinese knock-off that was very cheap (basically free), but no bargain given the service calls and down-time.

http://www.takumi.us/

Haas has gotten better over the years and continues to offer more each year in the product line. They're like the 4th or 5th largest machine tool manufacturer in the world now. Are they a Makino? No, but they're 1/4 the price with 80% of the robustness and longevity. The servo drives are typically Japanese or British, the mill ball screws are Steinmeir (German) and the lathe I have uses Rexroth (Bosch) ways. Not sure where all the China slams come in on Haas...the machines are designed in Oxford, CA and some of the easiest machines to get parts for when needed.

I's also be willing to bet Jesse James has more money than most.

I doubt he paid for it. It seems to receive lots of promotion.

love listening to these suggestions and NOBODY HAS HIT IT ON THE HEAD! NOBODY!


take blue prints

go to haas, go to mori seiki, go to hitachi seiki, hell go to everyjuan.

tell them how many widgets you want per hour.

tell them what finish

tell them your tooling allowance bucks.

tell them if you have existing tool holders. sandvik,iscar,mitsubishi,kennametal etc. saves bucks there.

tell them whomever makes MOST PARTS, LEAST CYCLE TIME, BEST FINISH, HIGHEST REPEATABILITY..............

and see who WINS!

watch the SH!! FLY! and chips.

w/new machines comes a tech guy who will program all tool paths x-y-z down to nats ass and make more parts in less time which = more profits.

...................NEXT...........after you have pitted all the machine tool companies against juan another and they all have promised you the moon, and they have literally beat the hell out of themselves trying to beat their competition..........

you then pit all the tooling companies against juan another and they repeat the above mentioned free for all slug fest and beat them selves silly trying to beat cycle times and finishes......................you then.............

pit all the coolant companies against juan another and let them beat them selves silly trying to make more parts, better finishes, less machine downtime, less haz mat to dispose of.

ASK ME HOW I KNOW ALL THIS CRAP!

sandvik
iscar
mitsubishi
komet
kennametal
carboloy...............................survivor of 1980's- 1990's machine tool wars!

i guarantee you after all the above..................somebody better come up with a incredible tool for you to even think of changing tooling, programming,coolants etc.

TRW air bag triggers by the MILLIONS. 304L looks like a threaded mushroom, filled with sodium azide. 36 QC checks. machined domestic and imported 304L and machinability changed every batch. cycle time 1 minute 4 seconds start to finish off of barfeed feed into hitachi seikis.

now do you think i miss that BULLCRAP dog eat dog eats dogs puppies testing regime??????

not in the least!

Thanks, I'm learning this as you know. I had a similar discovery in our little postal scale from Pitney Bowes, I found we were leasing a $15 scale for $20 a month for 10+ years. :rolleyes:

I have a lawyer go over our leases now.

Charles, I agree the high volume stuff is impossible. This is a specialty item, in lowish qty's with higher margins. Turnaround time requirements and QC issues keep China at bay.

Charles forgot to tell you to lie about the competitors price and cycle time to get them undercutting each other. Standard automotive purchasing practise nowadays.

My guess is the 'real' price is NOWHERE near the list price. Esp. if they sell you a demo model.

And, (warning, generalization ahead) postage meter/copier companies are the biggest scum I have ever dealt with.

Thanks,

The worst thing about Pitney Bowes was that the scale wasn't even listed as a separate charge, I had to ask. Unreal.

its a dog eat dog eat puppies machining world. have seen machine shops win huge accts(parts runs) for one (1) penny!!!! one ******* penny per part! after years of loyal perfect quality work.

i myself lost accounts for (1) one ******* penny per insert!

our motto was giv'em the holders and they will buy the bullets(inserts). proprietary holders can only use that mfgs. insert.

CNMG is cheapest geometry insert to use. cost from sandvik about .03 cents their cost to mfg. in a common steel cutting grade.

get into coated inserts and price goes up.

want to machine aluminum @ 10000RPMs(sounds like machine gun going off) on a mill...........use diamond coated inserts. last cost to customer i remember was a $110 an insert.

pit everyjuan against everyjuan and when dust clears , you will have a quality part and good cycle times.

machining center numero uno concern.

numero dos.........tooling.

numero tres.........coolant.

and dont ferget to hire a damn good open minded programmer!

hope that helps.

I meant that our machine shop's "specialty" is building parts for special machines that we design then build.....although we on occasion will "quote" on big "machining only" jobs when our machine building business is slow, we rarely can compete against shops who only do machining.

I was assuming the guys at your shop are good at making parts from tubing...I just worried about how you can suddenly expect to make a profit in strictly machining when you are new to the game. More power to you if you can, it just seems like a bit of risky endeavor from my POV.

Len, here's my 2 cents.

I've lived through a few machine installs, and done just about everything from engineering (new product), CAM/programming (lots of custom stuff including MasterCam post processors, CNC macros, etc), full manufacture engineering and optimization of heads, cylinder heads, crank cases, connecting rods, etc, lots of job setups, and even running machines (earlier in life). Most of my CNC experience is with larger horizontal Toyoda machining centers.

Keep in mind no machine new or used is going to hit the floor running. There are all sorts of things which will need doing before you are ready for production,

1.) Like obvious stuff, setup bus to get electricity, route compressed air, and make sure you have a good electrical ground.

2.) If bad floor and large machine, cut, dig down and re-pour concrete for proper foundation. Can happen, crappy floors make for unhappy machines...

3.) Install could take a while. Some machines come in parts. Mover drops off parts, factory guy(s) finish it on site. Then of course when finished they have to lazer in the machine, calibrate the probe, etc, etc.

4.) If you have a set in-house common pallet / fixture plate, you might have to machine a new adapter plate for the new machine's pallet or table.

5.) Then of course there is first run part setup which is always going to take a while. Setup off all the tools, inserts, offsets, fixtures, etc, etc for the job.

As for new vs used, I'd suggest used if you are careful where you get the machine from. Assuming the used machine isn't too beat up (and it has good positional repeatability), the difference between the new and the used machine boils down to positional accuracy which you can adjust for when the machine gets lazered in.
You are going to have to lazer (re-calibrate) the machine and the probe (more often) periodically anyway new or used. Install for either new or used is going to be about the same.

Ultimately if you have a really smart programmer, you can get around all sorts of stuff (problems) by having lots of offsets and probing things (part or fixture). Even a perfect machine is only accurate and repeatable to a certain point. Temperature, fixture wear, job swaping, etc, etc, all add in so many other variables that you are going to have to have a bunch of offsets in a program to comp for the unknowns, so machine wear quirks (on a used machine) just is another thing comped by offset adjustments (the lazer calibration cannot fix everything).

I'd suggest no matter what machine you get, make sure you have ethernet (standard computer networking access) to send programs to/from machine. If you are lucky and have a dedicated part for a given machine which can run 24/7 then you are in an ideal situation for amortizing the cost of the machine. However if you are running just one shift or have to job swap, ultimately labor inefficiencies (setup, change over times, down time, etc) are going to be the primary factor in profitability (through the life of the machine). I say this only because simple expensive machine options (depends on manufacture, like ethernet, in-machine tool offset probe, etc) can have a tremendous benefit in reducing change-over time for a job shop and are IMHO very worth it.

Anyway good luck with your project!

Ok, that makes sense. We are actually not new to CNC production machining, we have four machines now...they are just much more primitive/less complicated. Aside from this being a lower volume project and complexity of the piece it's very similar to most of what we do.

I'll admit it's an 8 or 9 on the difficulty scale and we're used to 4's and 5's but we need to go where the money is and this company is willing to let us give it a run.

Regarding how we can compete, that's actually pretty simple. Our overhead is nothing compared to the shops that normally get this kind of work, seriously not even in the same zip code. If my father didn't have such an "in" we would NEVER get a shot at the work, not in a million years. The carrying costs of the machine (even at 500-700k) are very small in relation to the revenues.

Thanks,

We've gone through machine installs before and you speak the truth. One thing I should probably clarify is that we would not be doing the programming or fixturing, this will be handled by an affiliate of the manufacturer. When I say "hit the ground running" I mean as much as is possible given our approach.