Hear our honest thoughts on the Citizen-Cincom A32 Type 7 swiss lathe.
Video Transcript:
“Welcome back to China Precision Parts Corp. I’m going to give you my review of the Citizen-Cincom A32 Type 7 swiss lathe. Let’s check it out!
If you’ve seen some of my other reviews about our swiss lathes, you know we have 5 different models here [at our shop.] We have the K16. We have the A20. We have the L20. We have the A32, and we have the L32. I’ve already done reviews on the K16 and the L32, links are [in the description] if you want to check those out. These reviews are from the [shop] owner’s perspective. If you want to hear high level details on the technical specs, then you’re going to want to get ahold of your Citizens-Cincom dealer. I’m going to tell you what they told me when we bought it. Did it meet my expectations or not? Do we need to improve anything? Are there things that are bothering me? What are the things that we really like?
The A32 is a little bit of a step up from our A20, and a little bit below our L32. It’s a fantastic machine for us. First of all, this is a 32-millimeter machine so 32-millimeter diameter material fits all the way through. This thing will run anything inch and a quarter under no problem. If we take a look inside, we’re going to see that the A32 has a similar setup to the other Citizens machines. We have our gang tooling. We have live holders on our back working tools. Four stations of live holders to allow for drilling and milling in the back.
We have a backside arm. The difference between this and our L32 is that arm is fixed. [It has] no ability to rotate that B-axis. Also it’s not live, so we can’t mill or do any live drilling on the back side. But it does allow you to do some drilling and backside work as material comes out of the spindle. So it’s a little bit more basic machine than our L32, but a nice workhorse for us.
A couple of cons with it. I mentioned the back side tool (or the the B arm) doesn’t move. It’s static, so no milling or live tooling on the back. You do have the option to add some live capability with some driven tools off your gang. That would give you front and back side work. These accessories are expensive. We don’t use them very often. We have them if we need them. If we have something that needs that level of complexity, we’re probably going to run it on our L32 machine. How we got around that was in this particular machine we added a high speed spindle. We do have a video on our high speed spindle, check out the link in the description. That gives us some live capabilities on that B-arm which is a nice addition to the machine. It gives you a little bit more flexibility with what you’re going to run here.
Like some of our other swiss lathes, we do have an exit conveyor and autoloader bar feeder. All the swiss machines have the same issues as far as bar feeders and exit conveyors. You have to take care of them. You have to make sure you’re doing your maintenance. You have to make sure your rollers are set correctly, your guide tubes are set correctly, your conveyor is set up right, or they’re going to cause you problems. Similar issues across the board.
So just to rehash some of the things we like and don’t like about this machine. It runs up to 32 millimeters. Runs about 90% of the products we have here. The other 10% that are either highly complicated require a ton of milling, we would move over to our L32 machine. Really, really tiny stuff we’re going to move over to our K16 machine. In between that 16 millimeter and that highly complicated stuff, [the A32] will do just about anything and we love the way it works. It’s got a nice amount of torque to allow for broaching and heavy cut. Exit conveyor for scrap allows us to run continuously as well as lights out. 12′ auto bar feeder is nice as it’s taken care of. Just a well put-together, consistent machine for us.
Some things that are a little bit more concerning, or you have to watch out for, again you need to take care of your bar feeders. Coolant flow is an issue with this machine, and we had the same issue on our L32. One thing that stops us every once in a while is just getting the coolant to return back to the tank, back to the machine to get rid of those low coolant alarms. You have to watch that. You are limited on your live tooling options in here and what you can do on the back side of the machine with the v-arm, but if you know what you’re running, you’ll put it in the right spot. We put it on the L32 or K16 or a different machine, so we can keep this running more basic parts for us. The only other con for it is they don’t make them anymore! If you want to buy one of these, you’re looking at the used market. We just picked up another one off the used market. Trevor’s going to talk to you about that in another video.
All in all, this is 4/5 stars. I wish they still made them. We have 3 of them and will probably get a couple more if we can find them. If you like our video, be sure to subscribe. If you have a comment, leave it below and we’ll get back with you. Thanks for watching!”