Tooling choices for a new shop

[Chuck Reamer]

I have the great opportunity of starting a brand new machine shop, at the moment I have a small Nadarni manual lathe and a larger Birmingham manual lathe. The purchase of 2CNC machines is in our VERY near future, they will probably be a Haas GT-20 lathe and a Haas VF5 3-axis mill.

For the lathe work it will be mostly plastic, fiberglass, peak and other glass and graphite plastics. There is also a lot of face grooving in the lathe work, and very thin part offs because of material cost. On the mill will be mostly injection molds and rubber compression molds, as well as some plastic and composites.

The real question is on a brand of tooling, I know everyone has a brand they like more than others. I have talked with a few tooling reps and they are all eager to sell me on there products.

I am fairly familiar with Kennametal and have a few of there turning tools already, but they seem a little expensive. A Sandvik rep is coming tomorrow but have no personal experience with there line.

I have also been in contact with an Iscar, Mitsubishi, Seco, Sowa, Sumitoma and Tool-Flow but don’t have any personal experience with any of them.

For most of the common inserts (cnmg, dnmg) I can try different manufactures, and go with the best bang for the buck. There is always some stuff that is particular to each brand, and I don’t want a large mix match of different tool holders. I know that not one manufacturer will have everything I am looking for, but hope to get most from the same place. I may get one brand for the lathe and a different for the mill, because there isn’t many mold and die milling tools from some manufacturers.

Any opinions on what your like or dislike about your tooling, especially if you do mold work.

[DSL PWR]

Mitsubishi has a liftime warranty. (They warranty STUPID, like trying to friction weld your part...) They aren't the cheapest tools, but if you take one out the price drops by %50.

[jackson]

well your choose in machines is not the best mostly the lathe the mill i could live with, and you can get very resonable turning and boring tool through interstate wich i order those through J&L ind. as for turning boring inserts sumitomo they are my primary and they arnt affraid to send samples to try before you buy and iscar for partoff and i really like there cam drills and for just standered drills Nachi have some off the best

[Chuck Reamer]

Originally Posted by jackson well your choose in machines is not the best mostly the lathe the mill i could live with,

I know these are start up machines, and there is only a limited amount of cash to get going. It will be nearly all plastic on the lathe so rigidity will not be a problem, and the size is all that I need.

Thanks for the comments, I will look into sumitomo a little more.

[Geof]

Originally Posted by jackson well your choose in machines is not the best mostly the lathe the mill i could live with,...

Why do you say this? I have a GT20 and I am wondering if it was a bad decision.

[jackson]

[QUOTE=Geof;255541]Why do you say this? I have a GT20 and I am wondering if it was a bad decision.[/QUOTE

Well for one i am not a big haas fan, even though i have three mills,"wich are ok machines" the new machines that haas are putting out are a big improvement. but like iv said before im a daewoo guy, set that haas lathe side by side with a daewoo put the exact same part and that daewoo will run 30% faster you can run a deawoo 24/7 365 for the next 10 to 30 years that haas wont make 5 to 10
now this is all baised of my experianc with daewoo and other peoples expireanc with haas lathes there has been quite a bit of talk about them in forms and its your typical some peaple love them some people dont but i can tell you they are not as fast or as ridged nor will they last as long

[cncsdr]

Personallylike iscar cheaper than kennametal and head to head seems to hold up better and the service i get from them is great.

[Chuck Reamer]

I have gotten a fair bit of Ingersol (teugi tech) turning tools and am very satisfied. The Sumitomo inserts have been very good as well, I am getting some NTK cerimets samples to try out.

For the milling I am going to go with mostly Ingersol, and Hanita for the carbide endmills.

I found a nice used Mazak 15m, with a T32-3 controller and live tooling. I believe that it will be a better choice for a lathe, the only thing is that it is Mazatrol only and no G-code.