tooling recommendations
hello on swiss is harder to compare od tools, since there is not as much machining ( mrr/hour, etc ) comparing to a bigger lathe; on long series, on okumas, i was changing tools once/shift or once/2..3 days, and when i moved to gangs, knowing what carbide is hq, i was changing some tools between a few days to a week

fewer tool changes help a lot, especially when all turret, or almost all gang-turret posts are being used ...

so, because gangs are machining much less material, then tools have a relative longer life, but conclusions can be gathered faster on bigger lathes, with increased mrr

on the other side, on gangs can be compared, without worries, id tools, since those would be the same also on a bigger lathe

i have my list for turning tools; for milling, i use recomandations from someone that is in contact with a shop that does heavy milling

This machine does have torque skip so i can push up on the stock to a given servo load and then clamp, I'm not a huge fan as i have seen it cause alot of part length variations on previous jobs, but it does save a lot of cutoff blades.
please, i did not understood, how do you save blades ?

about length variations, i only used it on okuma with consistency < 0.05 ( or even lower ), but i never used it on gangs ...

my plan was to drill a hole through the stop
yes, why not ... in many cases i have modified the knock-out, in order to ' suit ' the part shape

if possible, program the part transfer so to have 0.1 .. 0.15mm clearance between knock-out and part ( so to limit the ' slip ' ); may involve a knock-out extension, etc

they also take quite a bit of thrust compared to other drills
when it comes to tool life, i don't collect only tool-change-data, but also load data ... yes, there are load variations between drills from different vendors; it may be possible that the part slides inside the gang, because there is a drill with bigger core, and/or frontal attack/cutting-edge demanding more cutting force

a good load monitor functions will imediatly highlight such differences

Any way end of the day, i have his machine producing 10x more parts than he was making
i don't know exactly what you are reffering to, i did not follow who is subcontracting who, but i guess you are comparing an okuma with a gang, and, for small parts, the gang should beat the okuma; if you are intersted into reducing okuma times, then you need to reduce the number of turret indexing ( combi toolholders - craft your own for turning, buy for live tools etc ), ctr, small clearances ( smaller than the gang's ), bar feeding without stoping the spindle, a smaller chuck ( to shorten acc/decc time ), and smaller chucking travel; with all these, time difference between machines should reduce, and the main advantage of the gang should be it's higher rpms, and the 2nd should be it's faster acc/decc; tica-taca times related to bar feeders are not included / kindly

ps : please, what means ' slugging them through ' ?