Current opinion on RapidTurn?

[sansbury]

I have an 1100 Series 3 I've been very happy with for the past 5 years. Considered the Slant-Pro but just can't justify the $$$ relative to the number of turned parts I do right now, so taking a harder look at the RapidTurn and how good it is generally and for my purposes.

The largest part I'd want to make is a 2" flange in 6061 that gets turned down to a 25mm shoulder for a bearing slip fit and a 15/16-20 threaded section. So starting with 2.25" stock and turning about 2" of it down to 1". Right now I make this part on the mill by holding the stock vertically in a three-jaw chuck, it's a few thou out of round this way but good enough for my purposes. I thread-mill the threaded section and it works but it's slow and always fun because of how easy it is to snap a $50 thread mill A lot of other parts I'd make would be 1" or less diameter by 1-3" long, typically 6061/360/acetal.

I also have the ubiquitous Grizzly 10x G0602 lathe which is fine but I regret buying because it uses change gears and belts to adjust speed. I can make good parts on it but the repetitive setups for threading with the change gears are why I make those flanges on the mill. I wish I'd bitten the bullet and gotten one of the 12x lathes, but I didn't feel like dropping twice the money for the small number of turned parts I make.

I have a full Tormach baby QCTP setup from my old 7x lathe, so I wouldn't need much besides the basic RapidTurn kit, so the cost would be easy to swallow. And I have the 10x for those rare times I need to move metal on larger/longer parts. My hesitation comes from two things:

- Setup: I don't love the idea of having to set up and tear down the system to make one turned part. My work is prototyping so there's a lot of onesy-twosy stuff and I've continued to invest in quick-change toolholding and workholding to make setup easier. How long does it take people in the real world to change over and get things dialed in OK?

- Reliability: I've read some grumbling online about the toolpost moving and difficulty making consistent parts. If the story here is that you basically need to treat it like a 7x lathe in terms of rigidity and such, that's fine, I made plenty of good parts on mine. What I don't like is constant tweaking, which is why I decided to not bother trying to CNC my 10x lathe. Though I have considered making a fine feed motor because the worst part of the change gear setup is needing to switch between threading and fine feed to turn a clean shoulder and a threaded section on one part....

Curious to hear experiences from those who have one. I have watched some of Keen's videos which are both impressive for what he's built and a bit off-putting in terms of the amount of work it seems to have taken to get there. In my experience it's tempting to get a shiny new toy that will make a part slightly faster or nicer but take 5x as much time to learn/set up said toy versus doing something with what I already have. Fun but I am trying to stay focused on my existing projects rather than starting new ones....

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[hersh]

I'm not sure if it if it would save you any, but what about cutting the parts from bar stock in the vise and interpolating all the features. You maybe be able to get several parts programmed together on one strip of material. Then make some fixture of soft jaws to flip them over and clean off the back side/waste stock. I have some round parts that are 1.25" OD that I plan to do this with. Set-up and programming is easier (for me) compared to putting the stock i a spindle chuck.

I guess it would depend on how round you need your diameters to be. For me its not too critical so this should work out.

I feel like this side of the forums is a little less DIY, but for less than the price of the Rapid Turn you could convert your G0602 to a CNC lathe...

[syscore]

Do you already own a manual lathe?

[sansbury]

Do you already own a manual lathe?

Yeah, see original post--Grizzly 10x. That was my mistake, buying something without a QCGB. That makes setting threading up just enough of a PITA that I avoid it unless it's the only solution. And frankly I find manual threading to just be a bit fussier than I like--my thread forms often look slightly off (though they work) and no amount of fussing with the threading dial, infeed angle, tool grind, or anything has made this a foolproof process. I've had good luck making CNC processes that just work once I have the parameters dialed in well.

I'm not sure if it if it would save you any, but what about cutting the parts from bar stock in the vise and interpolating all the features.
<snip>
I guess it would depend on how round you need your diameters to be. For me its not too critical so this should work out.

Yeah, if I needed to make a bunch of these I'd do that. Milling is round enough for this. It's more that I get just enough parts where I think, "boy, I'd make these faster/nicer if I had a CNC lathe."

I feel like this side of the forums is a little less DIY, but for less than the price of the Rapid Turn you could convert your G0602 to a CNC lathe...

I've considered that but keep flinching. Before I got the 1100 I'd built two router tables and converted a micro-mill, an X2 mill, and a 7x lathe, including making all the parts for the conversions. So I know the drill and actually probably have almost all the parts needed in my storage heap. I learned a lot doing that but I felt like they were all projects that occasionally made parts. With the 1100 I spend 99% of my time working directly on making parts.

I have been thinking about an electronic lead screw build for the 10x that would be a bolt-on arrangement that kept the manual functionality completely intact. I'm kind of surprised there aren't more projects like that around, but maybe that's a sign that it's either not as easy or not as useful as it seems. Again, it's easy to get distracted by side projects. This is the main project, if anybody cares to dig around my channel I've got video of my 7x CNC hilariously titled "first real part." That was probably the last part I made on the thing, but it worked!

[daniellyall]

How much did the Slantpro end up costing Cliff

[IMT]

...Right now I make this part on the mill by holding the stock vertically in a three-jaw chuck, it's a few thou out of round this way but good enough for my purposes...

I'm in a similar situation, occasionally need a CNC lathe and use the "Mill as Lathe" feature. I've never had any accuracy issues though. Turned parts come out round within a few tenths. You got major spindle issues if it can't turn a round part.

[sansbury]

You got major spindle issues if it can't turn a round part.

I'm milling the parts with round stock held in a chuck as a vise.

[IMT]

I'm milling the parts with round stock held in a chuck as a vise.

That makes sense then. I misinterpreted what you were saying.

[punkman]

I have turned hundreds of parts with mine and enjoy using it. That being said there are things that are required in my opinion to make it useful.

You will notice many of us have opted to make gang tooling there is a reason for that. I tried using the stock QTP which for one off and very low volume parts that may be good enough. I did have a terrible time keeping the qtp aligned properly.
I made a gang tooling setup sort of like user keen on the rapid turn thread built but to be honest that has it's issues also, the biggest of which is the time it takes to remove it and return the mill to normal function. I created another gang tooling
setup now which took less than a hour to make and can be installed or removed in 30 seconds. I used the original spindle mount, bought a grinder side mount attachment and welded on a t-slot table I bought from little machine shop, this
has worked fantastic and is extremely flexible.

Recently I had to turn a run of over 500 parts. I could get two parts per run, had to reset the stock and cycle start again. This took a extreme amount of time and was a very unpleasant amount of work due to having to manually pull and set
the stock each run. I am soon to have to do a similar run and I have had enough of manually messing around with the collet every cycle. I ran across a youtube video that Bob Roderson, he showed how he adapted a lever operated collet
closer to his rapidturn. Now that was a neat idea but I saw tormach had a pneumatic collet closer for the slant pro. I have now added a bar puller to my gang setup and adapted a pneumatic collet closer to my rapid turn, no more manually setting
the stock it will be able to run a full bar through hands free.

[IMT]

Awesome!!! Is the collet closer from Tormach? It looks like the one for the Slant Pro. Or did you source it elsewhere?

[punkman]

Awesome!!! Is the collet closer from Tormach? It looks like the one for the Slant Pro. Or did you source it elsewhere?

I used the tormach kit but it is simply a dunham 5c collet closer and 24 inch drawbar tube.

To adapt it I used a atlas 10 inch lathe to rough in a 5x 1.5 inch spacer with a bore to fit just around the spindle locknut. I put the spacer on the mill and drilled the bolt pattern for the dunham closer, I drilled another through hole 4 bolt pattern to bolt it to the spindle pulley which I tapped. I mounted the rapid turn backwards on the table, took a light facing cut on the spindle pulley face bolted on the spacer and indicated it in. Took a light cut on the spacer face and bolted on the closer. Put a indicator on the end and tapped the closer into place and bolted it tight. I turned down the drawbar tube to fit through the rapidturn spindle (part way only enough to fit through the rapidturn spindle). I modified the pulley cover buy cutting the hole larger and welding on the solenoid bracket etc.

I reversed the air lines feeding the closer so that when power is applied it is in the closed position. I run coolant so I just ganged it to my coolant pump for control from the path pilot main screen as well as using the coolant so M9 to open the collet and shut off flood coolant and M8 to close the collet and turn on coolant.