how good has your tornado been

[ashro]

hi

i am planning to add another cnc to my machine shop.
i currently run a hass sl20 which i bought new in 2005, its been pretty good to be honest but probably wouldnt buy another one.
Also run a mazak qsh10 twin turret.

Whats the good points and bad points on tornados?

thanks

[rrbmachining]

I have an older tornado about 1995 and it has proved to be a very accurate machine, however the bad points are the Fanuc control and the service you get from 600 Group here in the UK, Haas are far better on support

[Nastyzen]

Hi I have a A50 storm from Colchester,It's a 2000 model year.
It's awesome for accuracy and speed.I am very satisfied with it's performance.
I am still impressed at how it could syc itself when I make threaded parts in G76 at 800rpm with it.
The servo torque sensors are very sensitive and will alarm out when a 10/32 tap gets dull before it breaks.I use it in barpull mode for 10 hr days for weeks at a time.
That said,It's British and just like there beautiful high performance sports cars they leak a little bit.The parts are expensive ie: turret dust seal $565.00 us
Maybe because I use a 40hp rotophase and am a bit rural but I find it very sensitive to power fluctuations.
I purchased it used and had some corrosion issues because of bad coolant maintenance and had to re chrome all the hydraulic cylinders.
The fanuc drives crapped out on me last year but that was after a slight power brown out I think or hope.The Fanuc America people were here for two days and fixed it.The fanuc guys are absolutely a professional class act.
My only regret is that it has no live tooling..

[ashro]

yes haas have been very good on service etc, just wouldnt fancy buying a used haas lathe.
there seems to be so many used tornados for sale and quite cheap.

thanks all

[ashro]

Originally Posted by rrbmachining I have an older tornado about 1995 and it has proved to be a very accurate machine, however the bad points are the Fanuc control and the service you get from 600 Group here in the UK, Haas are far better on support

can i ask what you dont like about fanuc control?

[rrbmachining]

The Fanuc control I have is an 0TC which is a little dated, for example it does not allow re entrant programms. I find it quite awkward to use compared to Haas, and its annoyingly mounted quite high on the machine, which makes your arm ache when editing a big program. Also watch out for the ammount of memory you get. Dont get me wrong these are good basic machines and I do like the accuracy and repeatabilty I get from the Tornado

[Nastyzen]

Mine has a Fanuc 21iT and it is mounted a little high also.I don't know the OTC but I do most of my programing on the pc and ether upload or drip feed via the Rs232.It also has an SD slot.
The spindle bore is a little small 1 .75 in. that's probably my biggest pet peeve.
I know some even came with parts catcher and chip conveyors.

[600Service]

Just to clarify...

The 21i fitted to modern Tornados is fitted with a PCMCIA slot which will take SRAM or flash cards. I believe SD card adapters are available but we don't recommend them.

[scott81]

I run a Tornado 220 and I think it's a fantastic machine! It's accurate and reliable. It uses the fanuc 21i-t which I also like, we used to have a tornado 100 which used an older fanuc sytem which wasn't a patch on 21i-t. The 100 has since been sold as it was no longer accurate enough (basicly just needed a good overhaul and service) My company moved a kingsbury MHP500 over to replace the 100. It also runs 21i-t which was a bonus! It was a no brainer really as the MHP has live tooling and the same turret (more or less) as the 220 so all tools are now interchangeable between both machines. (apart fom the live tooling) Over all I much prefer the tornado over the MHP. If they ever replace the MHP I'll be screaming at them for another tornado!