Do large machines make sense today?

[Garwood]

Does it make any sense to invest in large manual machines if they are very very cheap?

I may have just bought a Hardinge super slant CNC and a 36" Bullard from a shop this morning. They have a 60" X 480" manual lathe and a 120" Bullard that I could move. I don't think I have the room for the big Bullard, but I could actually fit the big lathe. It looks like 1950's. It's USA made, but I've never seen the name before and already forgot what it is. It's rough around the edges, but everything works. It's one piece. I would guess 65K lbs+

I don't want to be a machine tool museum or graveyard, but I've made more money so far this year on manual HBM jobs than I have with CNC. I had no idea how to run an HBM when I got it. I got it because it was a nice HBM for 1/4 of scrap value. Is really big lathe work similar at all?

It sounds like a stupid question I know.

 

[Herding Cats]

Good luck with the Hardinge super sucker . If you need help with it I have all the manuals and whatnot in PDF format. I also have some parts left and remember a little about them.

Big machines allow you to charge whatever you want. They may not run much but when they do.....cha ching

 

[Garwood]

The Hardinge looks nice, but has a bad spindle encoder and something else wrong with it. It has a Fanuc 0T and a 20' barfeeder. I don't even know what it is really. I just like that it's a small footprint and says Super Precision all over it. And it was dirt cheap. Right up my alley!

There isn't much work for big stuff out there, but at the same time 95% of the shops that used to do it out here are gone. The owner told me the big lathe was bought for one job for making parts for a dam. It paid for itself on the first part and made 24 parts.

 

[Herding Cats]

The Hardinge looks nice, but has a bad spindle encoder and something else wrong with it. It has a Fanuc 0T and a 20' barfeeder. I don't even know what it is really. I just like that it's a small footprint and says Super Precision all over it. And it was dirt cheap. Right up my alley!

Sounds more like a Conquest or some other model. As far as I know the super slants had a General Numeric control. Fanuc 6T with Siemens drives and motors. They also had a pretty large footprint. 11K lbs for a 6" chuck machine. Filled with a few thousand pounds of concrete which makes them fun to scrap if you don't know your scrap yard pretty well.

 

[Mhajicek]

It makes sense if you have work lined up for it, same as anything else.

 

[Garwood]

It makes sense if you have work lined up for it, same as anything else.

Very true. Thing is I didn't have any HBM work or manual lathe work and as word got out I had more than I could possibly do.

 

[Jashley73]

As long as you've got a way to rig the parts in & out of the machine, and it doesn't tie up too much floor space or cash, why not?

 

[Garwood]

Sounds more like a Conquest or some other model. As far as I know the super slants had a General Numeric control. Fanuc 6T with Siemens drives and motors. They also had a pretty large footprint. 11K lbs for a 6" chuck machine. Filled with a few thousand pounds of concrete which makes them fun to scrap if you don't know your scrap yard pretty well.

I Googled pictures and I think it's a Conquest T42SP Super Precision. Pictures look the same atleast.

 

[Garwood]

The big lathe is a Wickes. It's a monster. The headstock is 8 feet long and 5 feet deep. The chuck is integral with bolt on unit jaws. The lower gears drive the chuck from an internal gear on the back side. The top speed is 154 RPM.

What is a big old lathe like this usually sell for?

 

[Vancbiker]

Hopefully it is not a SuperSlant. The mix of Fanuc and Siemens made for a pretty poor interface between control and drives. Plus the SS used a hokey air motor driven tool turret. Lots of troubles with those and very important to keep the tooling fairly balanced on the turret.

 

[Garwood]

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It looks like this machine, but it's all gray. It doesn't say T42 or Conquest anywhere on it. It has a big Hardinge sticker on it with "SUPER PRECISION" under that then a small super precision stickers in other places. It looks mid 90's to me.

 

[Vancbiker]

It looks like this machine, but it's all gray. It doesn't say T42 or Conquest anywhere……

Repainted probably.

I have never worked on the Conquest series machines. After working on a few SS models, I started declining the call when folks would ask about Hardinge repairs.

 

[Herding Cats]

It's my understanding the machines that came after the SS where pretty decent. The SS left a foul taste in my mouth that has caused me to avoid Hardinge unless one came along for almost free.

 

[Vancbiker]

Probably the case. After the SS, it would be hard for them to get worse. When I first had to do some repairs on a SS, I was shocked at what a cobbled together thing they were. My previous Hardinge experience was with HLVH and DSM machines so had a good opinion based on those manual machines.

 

[vmipacman]

On big machines: I think big machines still make sense, but not without cnc, imo. (I would maybe consider a retrofit of a manual if it was a really good deal)

The reason you need cnc: If the large part was designed in the last decade, there is a good bet the designer put some stupid cnc feature on it that would make it difficult to hand work, like a large turned corner radius. Something fairly simple (they think), because cnc is ubiquitous so why not.

 

[Garwood]

On big machines: I think big machines still make sense, but not without cnc, imo. (I would maybe consider a retrofit of a manual if it was a really good deal)

The reason you need cnc: If the large part was designed in the last decade, there is a good bet the designer put some stupid cnc feature on it that would make it difficult to hand work, like a large turned corner radius. Something fairly simple (they think), because cnc is ubiquitous so why not.

That makes a lot of sense. If I was designing a new large part I wouldn't think to make it easy to make on a manual machine.

 

[MwTech Inc]

My opinion to your question is yes.
My largest, a #4 vertical mill doesn't get used that often, BUT,
when that job shows up that needs a 7' table with 44" of x........ yea baby.

 

[Garwood]

My opinion to your question is yes.
My largest, a #4 vertical mill doesn't get used that often, BUT,
when that job shows up that needs a 7' table with 44" of x........ yea baby.

A lot of shops have 60" X travel VMC's. over 100" is less common. Especially with 30"+ of Y travel. I found that big of a VMC was hard to load and clean for daily use. I was always inside the machine to set it up and clean chips out. I use my manual HBM a lot for big parts, but I don't need all it's travel ever really. Sometimes I use it like a really big lathe.

I think the HBM can make sense because it is so versatile. I can do really big lathe parts on it. It has a 5' cube work envelope. I think I would be smarter to watch for a deal on a 4" CNC HBM like the manual Kuraki I already have and sell the manual one. Before I was really using my manual HBM a Wotan 4" CNC with an old 6M Fanuc came up for sale for $3000 real close to me. I didn't think much of it, but I'd probably jump on that today. I can keep old crap running and the CNC part makes it twice as useful.

 

[vmipacman]

My opinion to your question is yes.
My largest, a #4 vertical mill doesn't get used that often, BUT,
when that job shows up that needs a 7' table with 44" of x........ yea baby.

But does that once-in-a-while job also justify the floor space and infrastructure needs?
If it was CNC would it get used more yet still take up the same square footage? (2X more? 5X more?)

What percentage of large turning work that Garwood may encounter can be done manually, without requiring CNC?
That is really the question to ask and answer. Since Garwood is looking at adding a machine that he does not have moved in yet. Maybe the ratio is higher with repair work, but lower with job shop work.

I personally would not go through the huge effort of moving in a 40Klb machine and not have it be CNC. It can be really old, (and cheap) but CNC jumps you way high on the "capability" scale.

 

[Garwood]

Most of the repair work I'm seeing today is parts for machines made in the past 15 years. It's hydraulic parts that are all made on CNC's so they're made differently than older stuff. Metric threads on everything.

My 4" HBM and pair of 20" manual lathes can make OK money doing repair work today, but I can definitely see how if that same floorspace was devoted to a CNC version it could be more productive. Grinding form tools sucks. Coming up with workarounds for metric threads sucks.