The guards on our machine say DO NOT USE DEAD LENGTH STOPS, DAMAGE WILL OCCUR, THE UNION WILL BE DESTROYED. What the heck is this about. I have parts that will be sawed long, face & thread 1st side, flip around, face & thread second side,holding OAL. How can you hold the OAL on a part that the OD is not turned (no shoulder to stop against) without a dead stop. Any comments would be great if someone has already done this. I know the dead stop worked for a Okuma and didnt hurt anything.

The machine has a hydraulic chuck and the drawtube moves to open and close the chuck. If you attach a stop to the end of the drawtube behind the hydraulic cylinder it will move, it will not be a dead center.:D

Depending on how long and what diameter your parts are it is possible to rig stops.

If your parts are small and short you can remove the inner liner piece at the front of the chuck; this is held in with three little socket head screws. Make a longer one and mount your stops in this.

Another way if your parts are long is to fabricate a bracket at the back of the machine with a bearing to support a stop on a shaft inside the drawtube. This stop rotates with the spindle but because it is held in its own fixed bearing it does not move with the draw tube.

We have a SL-20 and a SL-30 set up with the dead stop just like that it has been used off and on for 3 years and we have not had any problems try it at your on risk and if its a new machine this may void any Warranty I made mine out of 5/8-11 all thread and put a plate on the end that went the the close to the same size as the draw tube so there is no vibaration. when you clamp your part it will mive back with the draw tube so you have to push the part back as you are clamping.

I was at Haas's demo day today and there were a couple collect chuck vendors, ATS and Royal. Both of them has collect chucks where the collect is screwed into the spindle and is stationary while the ring moves forward and back to open and close the collect so the part does not move.

ATS calls their True Length and Royal calls their Accu-Length. Anyway I thought that was interesting. An alternative besides the pull back collect system.

I was at Haas's demo day today and there were a couple collect chuck vendors, ATS and Royal.
Ahhh...Torrance? I was there too (and I was starting to think that ATS and Royal were at all of the HFO events).

How long have ATS and Royal had these dead length collets?

I had this style on my Herbert turret lathes but when I switched to CNC machines I searched around and couldn't find anything similar for CNC lathes; well I could, it was a German product I think that cost more than any of my machines at the time.

They really are good for second operations.

Ahhh...Torrance? I was there too (and I was starting to think that ATS and Royal were at all of the HFO events).

Yup, Torrance. I went around 11:30am and the place was packed or to me it seems packed because I usually don't go until after lunch. Were there more vendors and more people this time? . . . maybe we can all meet for lunch there next time :)

How long have ATS and Royal had these dead length collets?

I had this style on my Herbert turret lathes but when I switched to CNC machines I searched around and couldn't find anything similar for CNC lathes; well I could, it was a German product I think that cost more than any of my machines at the time.

They really are good for second operations.

I'm in year zero of my cnc lathe life so to me everything has been around "forever" :) but you can take a look on royalprod.com I think the price for the royal are in the $3K range and $4K range for the AST, ast-s.com.

We Use an Royal Accu-length on our SL-10. Bought new with the Machine and we use it the majority of the time.
Collet is a 3J size and can run a 1.750 dia.
Nice piece, made really well, couldn't imagine running jaws day in and day out.
Can't live without it.
The collet stop we use attaches to id thread on collets and can stop a length to 7.000 long.

Paul

what collet stop are you using. I need to rig 3j's with a stop

We found a stop that goes in the spindle. Gives me what I need. We got it at MSC I'll post the part # tomorrow. I'm getting the SL10 to do what I want most of the time. Using the IQC free trial. Crashed into the tail stock. took 13hrs to realign. no damage. Tech did xtra effort on the caulking on reinstall of sheet metal. No more leaks!