[goldhntr]

The company I work for is considering a CNC lathe. I am the sole machinist in the shop and the company's focus is R&D. It is my opinion that a lathe with a 6in chuck capacity with a relatively hight RPM (think mostly aluminum) and live tooling is what we would need. The Haas ST-10 fits our requirements and cost. Is there any others that we might consider or is the best bang for the buck. Keep in mind that this is a R&D shop. Ease of use is more the issue than high volume.

[underthetire]

A mori seiki duraturn . Probably a little more, but the conversational programming is nice for short run and prototype. Nothing bad to say about the haas. Might even look at the entry level okuma lathes.

[fizzissist]

What the live tooling buys you for R&D is accuracy, and a little convenience.

I'd highly recommend a 3 axis lathe for R&D one-off stuff, much to the chagrin of many....I've run a lot of one-off parts on a Mazak, and the only shortcoming was my abilities to program as quickly as the machine would allow. My fault, not the machine's.

An advantage too is that you can always run a batch, or easily change a parameter for "family of parts" or minor design changes. ...or Whoops. We screwed that one up, can we have another one?

If you have to do flats or features that MUST be dead concentric with a bore or OD, it's the only way to go.

I'd easily consider the Mazak, Haas, or Mori, not in any particular order.

[goldhntr]

I was under the impression that any lathe that had live tooling would be a 3 axis lathe. What does it mean to be 3 axis?

[Delw]

for an r&d shop I would reccomend a lathe and a mill.
a lathe with milling in my opinion is a waste UNless you have specific parts for an r&d Shop. plus your limited in what you can do, if you have a part that needs to be milled and its square your screwed unless you want to make special fixtures to hold on the Lathe.

you will spend more time setting up and pulling your hair out for something that culd be done simple on each machine.

on the mill buy the 4th attachment,

Delw

[goldhntr]

I already have a CNC mill

[beege]

I was under the impression that any lathe that had live tooling would be a 3 axis lathe. What does it mean to be 3 axis?

3 axis usually means X Z and C, so you can cross drill in precise orientations, create milled surfaces and turn like any two axis lathe.

[goldhntr]

That's what I thought. More than likely, any lathe with live tooling would have c axis.