Do large machines make sense today?

[MwTech Inc]

Yes, the #4 has made money, pays for her space .
Have plenty of room so that's no concern for me.
Owning, operating large manual machines depends on what you do, your market.
For me it works, others may not.

 

[Jashley73]

On the other hand, if you HAD a big CNC machine but not necessarily the work for it, you can always go door-knocking to other shops and let them know that you have the big guy.

Especially any place doing fabricated weldments. We have lots of automation & custom machinery places in Kentucky. Being able to throw a big weldment onto a big HBM or double-column mill, and machine it all AFTER welding is really nice, and not all that bad of work to be honest.

 

[MwTech Inc]

Jash....
I agree about the big CNC........just not my business model.

Plus I don't have to feed it gallons of #2 oil running into the coolant.
Hit the button, she runs...LOL

 

[Barbter]

Hardinge Precision Conquest 42 CNC Lathe - The Equipment Hub

Visit here to learn more about this Hardinge Precision Conquest 42 CNC Lathe for sale. Contact us today for additional details.

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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.

These were solid machines - there was a lot sold in the UK and the company which bought my factory still has one in production which was bought in the 90's....

 

[Garwood]

These were solid machines - there was a lot sold in the UK and the company which bought my factory still has one in production which was bought in the 90's....

Hardinge SC-SP CNC lathe?

I was talked into buying one of these today. It looks early 90's with a Fanuc OT-C. It has an SMW barfeeder, 16C nose with a ton of collets. It doesn't have a tailstock, but it has live tooling on the turret and comes with a half dozen live tools. I wasn't going to buy it, but the seller kept...

machinistboard.com

It's good to hear somebody likes them. I have moved the Hardinge in.

 

[Oldwrench]

Perhaps the most significant business-model evolution you can make is to free yourself from the powerful, magnetic attraction of large manual machine tools. The floor space (and pit) required for a good-sized HBM or similar—and its work handling—has a cost. I kept big old stuff for years after I should have got rid of it just because I always admired the look of it. Big iron is solid and reassuring—and it's generally true they don't build 'em like they used to. But with today's work being designed for CNC production there's a risk of becoming a museum. If you have a 50-inch swing Pacemaker and no work for it, about all you can do is give tours. You die with tons of the stuff and your heirs go broke having it rigged out to the scrapyard...JMO, YRMV.

 

[Garwood]

Perhaps the most significant business-model evolution you can make is to free yourself from the powerful, magnetic attraction of large manual machine tools. The floor space (and pit) required for a good-sized HBM or similar—and its work handling—has a cost. I kept big old stuff for years after I should have got rid of it just because I always admired the look of it. Big iron is solid and reassuring—and it's generally true they don't build 'em like they used to. But with today's work being designed for CNC production there's a risk of becoming a museum. If you have a 50-inch swing Pacemaker and no work for it, about all you can do is give tours. You die with tons of the stuff and your heirs go broke having it rigged out to the scrapyard...JMO, YRMV.

I agree 100%

The large Wickes lathe that started this thread is being scrapped right now. I have a 4" Kuraki HBM. It kinda makes money, but not really enough to justify the floorspace it takes up.

The rules I operate the manual machines by is they can stay as long as they don't interfere with my products. If the day comes where I have been too busy to turn the HBM on for 6 months it's going for sale.

I have to say though, I really, really like HBM work. I do bridgeport stuff on my HBM all the time. It's nice having that rigidity and having the chips fall down.

Here's a rush HBM job I did Sunday. Enlarging a steering knuckle for a semi. The steering box broke in a wreck and the replacement from a newer truck used a larger tie rod. This was a $575 job. If it could wait 2 weeks it would be a $100 job. The small end of that reamer is 7/8".


The big pitfall I run into with HBM and manual lathe stuff is all the neat tooling you can buy into. I recently bought a large Lucas facing slide for my HBM. It sat outside in the Oregon weather for 30 years. It took me an entire day to disassemble it without breaking anything using heat from a torch and an impact driver to take all the SHCS out. I've spent about $300 on bolts and bearings for it and I will probably have another 2 days of cleaning and assembly in it. Then I have to fab up a boring bar base because it didn't have one.

Then there's an auction coming up that has a bunch of 72x72x24 heavy Lista cabinets with shelves that would be perfect to neatly store all this heavy HBM tooling in.

I figure a Kuraki HBM is a pretty damn nice HBM and one decked out with a power drawbar, a Newall DRO, tailstock, multiple boring bars, angle plates, V-blocks, facing slide, NMTB50 toolholders and a couple tons of setup materials organized in nice cabinets is probably worth the top end of what a used manual HBM can fetch.

 

[Oldwrench]

Aaargh! You lost me at NMTB50.
That Wickes sounds like the sort of thing an apprentice would have to put the tool in, while the operator stood and waited. My late brother used to run big lathes in a foundry, like the smallest thing you could chuck was 18 inches. Anything smaller needed extension screws in the jaws. He said the tool shanks were 3 inch square. BTDT, no thankee, you're a tougher man than I.

 

[Garwood]

Aaargh! You lost me at NMTB50.
That Wickes sounds like the sort of thing an apprentice would have to put the tool in, while the operator stood and waited. My late brother used to run big lathes in a foundry, like the smallest thing you could chuck was 18 inches. Anything smaller needed extension screws in the jaws. He said the tool shanks were 3 inch square. BTDT, no thankee, you're a tougher man than I.

That's exactly the kind of lathe it is. The owner used a 24" 4 jaw clamped in the 60" 4 jaw for most jobs. I bought the 24" 4 jaw from him for my HBM. It's a super nice all steel body with two piece jaws. The compound on this lathe is about 30" wide and 48" deep. 3 guys could stand on it. It looks proportional like a normal lathe compound, just 10 times the size. I'm going to try to get the compound off it before it's scrapped. I think it would make amazing yard art next to my giant gears and pulley collection that mark my driveway.

The crazy thing about today is THERE ARE NO SHOPS DOING THIS WORK. There isn't a ton of it, but it isn't a terrible way to make a few extra bucks. My shop is in a town of 35k people that supports a community of around 100K total. The logging capital of the world is about 40 minutes away from my shop. If I wasn't doing their work they'd have to drive an additional 1.5-3 hours each each way depending on traffic to get their stuff to a shop in one of the big cities and those shops are always out a month.

If it were possible to hire a good manual machinist, just someone who could do what I do, not screw too much up, for, lets say $30/hr pay, I could keep them busy 40 hours a week on just logging work on my HBM and 2 lathes. I really only do the emergency jobs and take care of a few good friends. If I said "bring me all the work" I'd be buried.

Problem is all those guys are 20+ years older than me and retired or dead now. I had a guy in here a few weeks ago buying some old tooling from me. He was about 10 years younger than me. He had an ME degree and had worked as a manual machinist for awhile. He had been trying to make it on his own for a couple years and wasn't really succeeding. I offered him a part or fulltime job, whatever he wanted. Offered to let him use my machines to do his own stuff if he wanted to keep his own gig going too. Guess who never bothered to follow up afterwards?

 

[Oldwrench]

Problem is all those guys are 20+ years older than me and retired or dead now.

That's not gonna get any better. An example from a few decades back is the gun that exploded in one of the Iowa's forward turrets. The rest of the ship's main battery remained combat ready but the possibility of replacing a 16 inch rifle was zero. The Washington Navy Yard where the gun factory had been located was long gone, and—irony of ironies—the only lathe in existence big enough to make such a thing was in (wait for it) JAPAN.
Heavy military equipment seems to be heading toward obsolescence, what with its vulnerability to missles. Outside of tanks and armored warships I can't think of much commercial application for ultra-large machine tools except for mining. A P&H dragline isn't a high-volume product; there aren't dealer lots full of them. And they are trying to outlaw mining anyway. Logging is already restricted. As a business strategy involving employees I'd be looking at small parts over the long term.

But maybe I'm biased because I probably can't lift an NMTB50 holder...

 

[Garwood]

Not many of the parts I work on are heavier than 1500 lbs. Lifting 50 taper toolholders keeps me out of the gym.

I don't think the service I provide is just manual machining. The service is really coming up with a reasonable solution to remedy a customer's problem. Often times the problem is time=money. When the hydraulic cylinder is $15k from Cat and 3 months out and I can fix it in 3 days for $6500 guess what they do?

And I think getting the work is mostly about clear, quick communication with my customers and turning jobs around quickly.

I do a lot of manual repair work jobs for people I have a lot of history with and when they call me with a problem I have often explained that if I take my attention from what I'm working on and focus it on your problem I need to make $XXXX to make up for getting behind on my primary work. Often times that equates to making several hundred an hour to fix their stuff, but it still pencils out for them.

The more I really think about this, I believe the lack of shops doing repair machine work is not about a lack of machinists. It's about a lack of people that can stare down a customers broken part or a shitty sketch on a paper plate and come up with a real, workable solution in a short timeframe.

Yesterday I made a threaded insert with a .030" orifice for a farmer. He came from quite a ways away as he couldn't find anyone who could cut threads or drill a .030" hole. That's crazy. Anyone with any lathe could have made it.

 

[Barbter]

The more I really think about this, I believe the lack of shops doing repair machine work is not about a lack of machinists. It's about a lack of people that can stare down a customers broken part or a shitty sketch on a paper plate and come up with a real, workable solution in a short timeframe.

This.

 

[Vancbiker]

This.

Me too.

 

[TomS]

if the serial number on the Hardinge starts with either a CS or SG it would be a Conquest Series machine, CS is the 1st generation, SG second Generation and CQ is the latest. Good machines, if you look to get rid of it PM me I know a dealer that will buy up everyone of them he can find.
Tom

 

[Mud]

This is my foray into larger work. These trunnions probably should have been done on a horizontal boring mill, the company couldn't find anyone to do it so brought them a 1 hour drive to me.
I lucked into this machine, it's a Deckel FP7NC, a big 50 taper H/V CNC toolroom mill. This job paid for the machine, but my god dealing with the company was a huge PITA. I redesigned this part for the engineer after the first one was done, as so often happens.
Being CNC I use it for a lot of small work, I do a lot of in house onesie parts and prototype stuff on it. And fixtures. I don't look for the outside big work. A guy knew a guy who knew a guy who knew me. These parts got put on the table with a forklift.
I have a 10" facemill for it I use occasionally, I'm just about at the limit of my strength to get it safely into the vertical quill.
No that's not me in the photo.

 

[Garwood]

Neat looking machine. The overall footprint doesn't look bad at all for a powerful 50 taper CNC. What is it, about 10' square?

I don't have any large face mills. I've thought about picking up some biggies for the HBM, but haven't really needed one yet. I can't say I've ever done a job on the HBM that had a ton of material removal or had to make a large surface flat. Most jobs are boring, drilling and milling keyways so far.

 

[Vancbiker]

The Maho machines of similar design had very small ways on the "knee". They would all start to sag after a few years of use due to wear on the turcite and the keeper plates needed to be rescraped flat and step ground to get the geometry decent again. Does the Deckel version have a similar problem?

 

[Mud]

Neat looking machine. The overall footprint doesn't look bad at all for a powerful 50 taper CNC. What is it, about 10' square?

I don't have any large face mills. I've thought about picking up some biggies for the HBM, but haven't really needed one yet. I can't say I've ever done a job on the HBM that had a ton of material removal or had to make a large surface flat. Most jobs are boring, drilling and milling keyways so far.

It's 7' wide x 10' deep plus a movable electrical cabinet. Yes that's pretty compact for 39" X 26" x 29' travels. Weighs between 16K and 20K depending which document you refer to.
I've only used that facemill as a large flycutter with 5 inserts in it out of a possible 15. It's nice when using the machine in manual/powerfeed mode, I can make a single pass instead of several passes on larger parts.

 

[Mud]

The Maho machines of similar design had very small ways on the "knee". They would all start to sag after a few years of use due to wear on the turcite and the keeper plates needed to be rescraped flat and step ground to get the geometry decent again. Does the Deckel version have a similar problem?

The smaller Deckels up to FP4 are exactly like that. This was built by SHW, the germans who build machines the size of small buildings and it's better but still has weakness there. It has large areas of Turcite all around including the gibs, heavily laced with oil grooves and an excellent oil system that uses Vactra 4. I had all that apart and rescraped it, it needed it but wasn't terrible. The weakness is all the weight hanging way out front and the ballscrew way back inside the machine behind the ways. This one has the optional tilt 2 ways and rotate C axis table which adds a lot to that cantilevered load. I think the table alone weighs about 5K, it squatted the tires on my 5K forklift pretty hard and took 2 2ton chainhoists to lift back onto the machine. Plus the X axis that the table attaches to is another 3K or so.
The problem with this design is that the ballscrew can't be placed out directly under the center of the table like on a conventional horizontal mill.
I replaced the ballscrew, I think SHW hung it on a hook and built the rest of the machine around it.

 

[Mud]

This is the place I bought that machine from. Original purchaser before them was Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab which I understand is an amazing place, but there's no way to visit unless you are an employee or family of an employee.

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