Hello, I am considering a CNC/manual combo that will aid our shop with making parts. Currently, we have all manual machines, but I believe we could be much more efficient if we used CNC even though we are doing 1 or a few parts at the time. We are a reman/repair facility and are building hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder shafts, glands, pistons, and barrels. Overtime, many parts are made again, but not all at once. I think a conversational toolroom teach-type CNC/manual lathe will do the trick. Am I correct in believing we can save significant time and if so, what do you recommend.

Many thanks

Claven,
I have a Haas TL-1 toolroom lathe. I think a CNC toolroom lathe would be ideal for what you want to do. If you are threading cyl shafts it would make that job very easy. Check out the TL-1 video on the Haas site. The Milltronics toolroom lathe is nice too. If you get either one of these lathes you may not ever want to use your manual lathe again.

Mark Hockett
Island Tech Enterprises
Clinton, WA
360-914-6026

More chip less lip

I have a Taiwan lathe (Turrett), fairly generic looking machine; I see these machines (and very similar looking machines) branded with all sorts of different names.

Fagor 8040 control running Yaskawa drives.
Electronics are (obviously) all respectable brand names that I am familiar with.
The Fagor control is super easy to use "conversational" type.

These machines are very reasonably priced (Haas/2) and I highly recommend them for toolroom use.

I believe that we are all on the same page that these machines are not well suited for "production" use.

The milltronics toolroom lathes are a good choice. I have experience with the Haas lathes and the Milltronics. Programming I find the Milltronics more apealing than the Milltronics. Programming is easy with the DXF file input. I was comfortable with programming within a week or two on the Milltronics with simple parts. There is always someone to help you with programming questions when you call. Support has been great!