Used Tsugami CNC lathe episode

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In previous posts, we had discussed the value of purchasing used cnc lathes under general circumstances and also the value of considering the purchase of used cnc lathes under more specific set of conditions. We discussed how used cnc lathes can reduce the capital expense involved in machining houses when economic conditions are tight as well as how used cnc lathes can be a good value when used for the purpose of secondary operations. In this post, I would like to describe a real life scenario that involves the situation with a used Tsugami cnc lathe.

I was involved with a machining facility which for the most part dealt with high volume machining of steels and aluminum. The facility had started off with a set of brand new Mazak cnc lathes which after several years of use had become used cnc lathes by our definition. As described in a previous post, even though the Mazak machine tools had become used cnc lathes by now, the machines worked perfectly with no problems whatsoever; everyone was a fan of the Mazak cnc lathe machine tools.

We had a request from a very large customer of ours on a set of parts that could potentially become a medium volume job for a very long period of time. This was in addition to the business that we were already enjoying. Needless to say no one wanted to turn this work away. There was only one problem and a big one in that the parts were all ceramic parts. That involved purchasing partially fired ceramic rods and machining the necessary shape by machining. I immediately said to myself that no way will this material be turned in our Mazaks. So there came the perfect opportunity to purchase a used cnc lathe. We contacted a local machine tool dealer and he offered us a used Tsugami cnc lathe for consideration. This used Tsugami cnc lathe was twenty years old, two-axis and came with a twelve station turret. We purchased it and had the cnc lathe installed and working. Unfortunately, there was no tooling that came with the used cnc lathe and there were no manuals.

After some playing around and doing some minor repairs and purchasing some basic tooling, we had the machine up and running. It worked perfectly for our ceramic machining job and we had started to make parts after struggling somewhat with the programming. However, the parts that were machined in the partially fired ceramic state required subsequent firing operations in a small air furnace which was actually quite an expensive deal. We struggled with the secondary firing operation quite a bit and could never really meet the specification requirements. After hundreds of firing runs and numerous discussions with the ceramic rod supplier who was nearly impossible to deal with, we decided to pull the plug on the project and I do not blame management because we were throwing money away and not getting anywhere.

The result was the scrapping of the project and now the question became what do we do with this used Tsugami cnc lathe. Since we had cut so much of ceramic with it and the machine had gotten tore up by now, we simply had no use for it in our shop and so we decided to see if we could get rid of it. We ended up with a buyer in about three months because he was going to use it for dry cutting of some parts that had very loose tolerances and he was really looking for something exactly as we were offering and the old Tsugami cnc lathe was gone. Because we had specifically gotten the machine for this specific project without letting the project interfere with our normal parts machining, and because it was an old used cnc lathe, our expenses in our project was really just a fraction of what it could have otherwise been.