My company has a part that is using 40+ year old technology to machine a casting. We cannot swing this in a lathe unless we develop some sort of fixture with so much counterweight to get this thing spinning symmetrical. The way we manufacture this part now is by clamping it onto a fixture in a manual lathe, chucking onto a 4" shaft in the spindle to the tail-stock with basically a fly cutting head to bore through and also counter bore the ends of this casting. The ID of the casting after final boring is around 10" and the casting is about 18-20" wide. The problem is the lathe this fixture was made to fit on is 20+ years old at our company and probably at least another 10+ somewhere else. The lathe is showing significant wear on the bed ways and also that the head to tailstock has .008" taper vertical between centers over 18" and has problems beyond that with the fixture plate that was made 50+ years ago needs to be revamped. This process of machining just seems to be outdated to how we could be machining this part and is takes a significant amount of time compared to where we could be with the right tooling.

We may be looking into a new CNC Mill of substantial size that would possibly be able to hold tooling of significant size. At the moment I don't believe the Mori SVL mills we have will work due to lack of travel and all of our mills are vertical.

The casting is Aluminum, and will have some brass rings that get pressed into the ends before final bore, so its relatively soft material.


Does anyone have any experience with large bore mills or any other sort of tooling which would work perfectly in an application like this? Any tooling, or machine recommendations would be great. Just trying to get some ideas on how to go after this beast.
If any other info is needed let me know
Thanks