bar feeder

[JohnRobHolmes]

So who here has a bar feeder on there lathe? I would love to have such a fancy machine. In the mean time I'll just have to fantasize about your machines and live my fantasies by proxy

[rlockwood]

we've got a couple swiss style lathes with barfeeders, but they're limited to 12mm dia capacity. They work great for what theyre designed for, but are pretty limited in reality

[Crawling Calvin]

I have seen a few setups for tiny machines like a Sherline where someone had a tube that closely fit their material and had a low PSI air system behind it and the stock acted like a giant piston. Really basic... but a really neat idea. The skies the limit really, depends on what your expecting it to do

The big guys use servo fed bar feeders... ive operated one, crazy nice but scary overall if your doing a CNC operation and you have a power chuck/collet system having a bar feeder is nice. That being said it is easy enough to un-do a chuck/collet, pull the stock and go from there

[Charlie-III]

I don't have one.
John, are you looking to automate the bar feeding?

I have worked with bar feeders before, both on CNC & "hydro-manual". They are great if they are part of a CNC program and you're making a lot of smaller parts.

[SMR 510RR]

The place I used to work had barfeeders on the lathes, I think they would take up to 4" maybe more but I know we through 4" in there all the time. Talk about production, thing would just spit out parts all day long and all you had to do was put 10' lengths of stock in there every once in a while and clean the chips out if they got tangled (also had a chip conveyor on it).

Now they went to all swiss machines up to 1.5" capacity and they run unattended 24hrs a day. My old boss has webcams so that he can watch them run through the night if he needs to haha.

[JohnRobHolmes]

Thats what I'm talking about! Webcams on the machine and chip feeders to take the parts and swarf away so they can run 24/7, hahah! I'm just dreaming of 10 years from now and always thought that bar feeders were pretty slick stuff.

[jason]

I went on a tour of MIP a few years ago, they have machines in there turning out CV's 24/7, all automated, it was awesome to see.

[Duuuuuuuude]

I saw "bar feeder" and somehow an image of a bartop pretzel/peanut dispenser came to mind.

[SMR 510RR]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

Thats what I'm talking about! Webcams on the machine and chip feeders to take the parts and swarf away so they can run 24/7, hahah! I'm just dreaming of 10 years from now and always thought that bar feeders were pretty slick stuff.

If you are running production on a lathe then a barfeeder is a must, they basically run themselves at that point.

[gerr]

Originally Posted by Duuuuuuuude

I saw "bar feeder" and somehow an image of a bartop pretzel/peanut dispenser came to mind.

I was close to the same idea, my idea was a feeder that kept fresh kegs in the bar kinda like a magazine feeder for a screw gun lol

[rangercat23]

I use one of these in my CNC at work. Not as elaborate as a bar feeder but it works awesome for what it is worth!!!

CNC Bar Puller - Dunham lathe bar pull

[rchrdwiid]

knew a guy who's lathe would phone his house when the bar was done. he'd walk down too the shop and reload the machine. give him an excuse to check a part.

[mtdriver]

I run a Mazak CNC Lathe with a bar feeder on it. Only does 48" sticks though. Super nice to set it and forget it. Start up at night and come back in to work with a few hundred to a thousand parts ran. I even make plugs so I can run tubing when we cut spacers or whatever. I can log into security system and see the machine with the security cams. Thats more handy with the laser though.