When it comes to experience working with Citizen swiss lathes, China Precision Parts Corp. really is the veteran. We have 5 different models of Citizen swiss lathes in our machine shop, so we’ve seen the good, the bad AND the ugly. How does the Cincom L32 stack up? Find out now.
Video Transcript:
“All right everybody, welcome back to China Precision Parts Corp. If you are at this video, you’re probably looking for some information on Citizen swiss lathes. I’m going to give you my review on the Citizen’s L32. We have a wide variety of different models of swiss lathes here at China Precision Parts Corp. Not one. Not two. Not three, not four, but five different models of Citizen swiss lathe.
The L32 Type 12 is one of our most productive swiss lathes. The machine takes 32mm diameter material. It’s got a plethora of tooling positions both on the back side with double roll holders, the Gang, as well as a sub spindle. What makes this machine unique to us and one of the most productive, is the B-axis arm. That arm is live and programmed on the fly. We can rotate it at almost any angle up to just past 90 degrees to allow us to work on the part, live milling, cutting, whatever we need to do on that backside arm. It’s been a fantastic machine to run highly complicated parts, lights out, at very precise tolerances.
A couple things to watch out for with this machine. The bar loader system is integrated into the the main control panel, which is a nice addition. However, we’ve had problems with our three L32s loading 32mm bars of stock automatically. Seems to be some kind of design issue with the machine that the bar collet loader actually interferes with the casting of the machine. If you’re considering one of these, you’re going to want to make sure you talk to your Citizens rep to see if they’ve got that issue taken care of. Otherwise you’re going to have to find a workaround like we have to do. We either have to cut bar ends down, or single load bars to make it run the large diameter material. Definitely something you want to look out for.
Another issue to be aware of that’s really across the board with our swiss lathes, is coolant flow and low coolant alarms. We take a lot of pride in running our machines lights out, and the number one issue we come into, if there was a failure with the lights out operation, is a low coolant alarm. Ironically it doesn’t really have anything to do with the amount of coolant in the machine. There’s plenty of coolant. It’s got to do with the flow of that coolant and the amount of chips that build up. Chips built up into this system so much that it doesn’t allow the coolant to get back in and through the system to register that it’s full, so it alarms the machine out. So you spent a lot of time cleaning these out. So much so, sometimes we got to get Trevor in there with this toy shovel to get really down and dirty to clean these out so they keep running. Maintenance of this system is really important for lights out operation.
All right, guys. All in all I’d give this machine a 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a fantastic production machine for us, but it has some minor quirks you need to be aware of.
Be sure to check on large diameter stock. It’s going to run through for you. Be sure to manage your chip flow. Make sure that’s taken care of so it can keep it running on those unattended operations.
I’ll take you through the rest of our swiss lathes in future videos. Be sure to like and subscribe, and put a comment in if you got questions. See you next time.”