Walked into a shop in Tulsa and everything changed my mind about 5-axis work

I always thought 5-axis machining was overkill for small job shops. Plenty of my parts came off a 3-axis just fine. But last month I stopped by a place called Green Country Precision in Tulsa to pick up some scrap. The owner was running a simple bracket part on a used Haas UMC-750. He let me watch a full cycle. That part had angled holes and a contoured pocket that would have taken me three setups and a bunch of fixturing. He did it in one shot with a single vise. The finish was way better than anything I could hold with a manual indexer. I asked him about the programming time and he said it took him about 20 minutes with Fusion 360's multi-axis stuff. Now I am starting to think I need to look at a used 5-axis for my own shop. Has anyone else switched and regretted the extra maintenance costs?

2 comments

2 Comments

park.robin1mo ago

I read somewhere that a lot of shops are starting to buy used 5-axis machines because Fusion 360 and other cam software got way easier to program for multi-axis work. Honestly that matches what you saw in Tulsa. The whole one setup thing is the big deal, not just the machine itself. For me the maintenance thing is real though. I've heard guys say the rotary table bearings and the extra alignment checks can eat up your weekends. But if you're already doing brackets with angled holes and contoured pockets, it might pay for itself in the time you save on fixturing. Just be ready to learn a different workflow for your CAM.

kim1911mo ago

What about the CAM workflow change though? @park.robin are you seeing people really struggle with the post processor configs for those older used machines? I've heard the newer software handles it fine until you hit some weird custom macro the original builder put in ten years ago and nobody remembers why. That kind of thing could eat up the time savings pretty fast if you're not careful.