Haas has a great video comparing a vf to vf ss to a dm the cycle time reduction is amazing on the dm. For aluminum especially with small cutters rpm is going to win every time. You will need to sit down and figure out what your max rpm/feed rates would be for the part ideally and buy into a machine that has that envelope.

I’m curious if you have an update on the machine you chose.

I was actually asked to look at equipment, at a shop that was going out of business, because of that philosophy. I walked in their and was like wow this has to have the most random assortment of tools I've ever seen.

Great point! Our drills cost $200 vs $20 for traditional ones. Worth every penny and pay for themselves within days.

Check out Revolution Machine Tools out of Utah. We recently bought an auto saw. It's not huge, up to 9" diameter capacity which is more than enough for our needs, paid under $10k delivered. If you need something bigger they do have bigger models but we didn't need to spend the extra cash. Hope that helps. I have a 10 HP Polar piston compressor. Need to upgrade sometime soon. Not sure if to stick to Polar or switch to Quincy or Kaeser. Any insight on these?

@@ciscohernandez4384 Hey thanks for the reply! I will definitely check out your recommendation! As for the compressors, both Kaiser and Quincy are reputable manufacturers with long spans in the industrial area. You probably can’t go wrong with either, but I don’t have 1st hand experience, so I shouldn’t give an opinion either way. However I went with Polar or now Eaton, because they offered higher HP on single phase which is what I am equipped with currently from my service provider. Most industrial machine manufactures only offer 3 phase machines as it is cheaper and their customers will be in a facility that has 3 phase power. Eaton is the one manufacture that offers a proper 3 phase motor on a VFD drive controller for single phase power. I do use a rotary phase converter to run my other machines, but the air compressor is always running and I wanted to run that not on a rotary if at all possible. Cheers!

They are a major investment, but provide a drastic improvement in efficiency and safety. Possibly even quality and simplicity if your process is solid. We have 4 standalone Mazak HMCs and 2 in a 43x palletech system. We would have to at least double if not triple the size of our shop to to fit the number of VMCs it would take to do the same amount of work. An HMC may cost double a VMC, but they can do well more than double the work. There are so many benefits, even with just a pallet changer (no pool), but I would say my top 3 would be 1. Work piece handling happens away from the work area, so it's not only safer, but the machine is working on the other pallet while you unload/load 2. The 4th axis isn't an add-on...it's a standard part of the machine and 3. The tool magazines are larger by default, but can be optioned to be huge. This means you can tool up for many jobs and reduce setup time.

Pumasforpets, I agree, we started with a small horizontal many years ago, but it turned out to be a lemon. It did the job, but didn’t take us to the next level, so tried verticals again. That was a mistake! Did a bit more research, and took advantage of the pace of progress to land us the perfect setup for our application, a DMG Mori NHX4000 with a five pallet pool and 240 tool magazine. “Cheapest” machine I’ve ever bought.

You missed the entire point. Two very slow machines always has much higher output than one super speed machine.

My SS machine runs in 50 percent rapid. At 100 percent and 12k rpm the spindle takes too time to stop and that rapid speed gets negated as it just waits for the tool change. The only reason I got the SS is for 12k rpm and side mount tool changer, which at the time was cheaper than a non SS with the rapid speed doesn't save me any significant amount of time.

In my opinion, you're on the right track learning Fusion to program both mills and lathes. It's always good when you learn and embrace new technology. You should however have a basic ability to read G-code to understand what the machine is going to do when working through a set up. - JP

Agreed Jay. It is a better process to control programs by using your Cam system, but it is equally important to learn the codes so that you can machine components confidently. I have had many times in my experiences of catching mistakes in process. Also post processing will vary and it is important to maximize you machine controls to there fullest capabilities.

Personally I work at a shop where we all program by hand. We have mostly haas lathes and like 4 Haas mills. If you're doing somewhat basic stuff on the lathes like turning a diameter and drilling, boring, or threading really it's much faster to program by hand. I could have a job set up and programmed within the hour. Same goes for the mill, if you're just doing bolt hole circles or some slotting it's really easy to just program that stuff by hand. Cam comes in handy when it's really complex stuff. Like on the lathe we make some pulleys that have v grooves in them. We don't buy inserts for that size of groove either we manually program this by hand using a cutoff tool/groove tool. This can take some time as there's a lot of math involved. Some machines like mazak which we have 3 of them at my shop, has capabilities using mazatrol to easily program grooves with little math needed. Newer mazaks with touchscreen control basically has cam in it. It really shows a 3D picture of what you're trying to make which honestly is a big bonus over a Haas. I really wish Haas would improve they're graphics. I love the classic look but at the same time when you program live tooling or anything of that matter there is no graphics at all. I guess this is why cam would be great 🤔🤔 lol!

Just for fun make a simple fly cutting program by hand or drilling op. It will make you a better machinist undoubtedly.

using CAD Cam and programming at the machine is a good thing some machines have some special features inside that a CAM cannot use, so you have to program it manually, especially programming parametric programs. I run 5 Axel machines where it is These are functions that can not be run from CAM. I use a Heidenhain controller TNC 640 where there are so many special features where I can not get in touch with CAM one of the functions is that I can have a measurement report made directly on the machine and print it out, so when the machine has finished working, I have a measurement report and a finished item

Polar sells direct so you're not paying for a price markup that brings no additional value.

@@PiersonWorkholding That makes good business sense. I was curious if Polar was better made or something.

Spoke to a compressor dealer the other day and he said there actually kinda shady and import there stuff do a few simple things and say they made it in Ohio…