Not really Honda related, but I figured some of the other machinist/fab nerds could drool over some nice high dollar equipment.

So these past few weeks at work have been very exciting - we're upgrading a lot of equipment in the shop. We hope to have everything settled in about another month or two - we still have some new machines coming up from Florida next month.

This is how the shop used to look:



We are getting rid of a bunch of the old King VTL's - some of these machines are from the 1940's!

This is just one of the new machines coming in:



An Okuma Multus B400-W turning center - there will be two of these.

I am very excited about all the new capabilities we will have with the newer equipment. I will post new pictures when the transformation is complete.

 

looks great. happy to see the upgrades. i want a job at a machine shop bad.

 

Want.

(Who am I kidding? I'd be happy with one of those 40's-era VTLs...)

 

had a smaller okuma turning center back in college, very nice little machine!

Wish my work would pick up a turning center, we're up to 12 VMCs and HMCs, but just one older hardinge manual lathe. ugh :D

 

okuma's are expensive. does it have a bar feeder?

 

2? Wow - deep pockets. Nice way to drop a $MIL + !

 

I don't believe it has a bar feeder - it would be of little use to us anyhow. One of the Mutlus' is dedicated to making one part that has an OD of around 26".

 

yeah, bar feeders are for high volume stuff (great if you have that kinda work). a shop a couple doors down from me has a few lathes with feeders and they run them around the clock spitting out a part every 2 minutes.

 

The dedicated Multus has 9.5 hours of code to run through, so we usually spit out a part every 11 hours. Before we purchased this machine, it took around 40 hours to machine one part. It's very nice to be able to go from forging to finish machined on one machine!

 

it is amazing how much time can be saved by using the proper machine/tool for the job. looking at the mic's in the first pic, it seems you guys do some pretty big stuff.

 

Quite the range of stuff - from 6" compressor wheels all the way up to 46" compressor cases, for the round stuff we work on.

 

Those old VTL's are cool, my buddy has a machine shop with a couple really big old vtl's, they'll humm along all day making .800" cuts.

New Okumas are sick!
I'd love to be able to afford new machines, they are so fast.

Back to my old Matsuura mc-500v2... does the job for now.