Amada Aries 222
Turret Sleeving

Amada Aries 222 at a glance

Era

1980s-90s

Tonnage

20 ton

Stations

19

Turret

Thin turret

Control

Amadan 04PA

This group collects Amada’s smaller and specialist turret machines: the compact Aries line, the eight-station Octo, and the heavier Vela II. All are long out of production, and for most of them no replacement exists to buy — which is precisely when restoring the turret you already own stops being a choice and starts being the only option.

Where this machine is in its life

A Aries 222 built in 1980s-90s has been earning for three decades or more. Machines of this generation are usually fully depreciated, well understood by the people running them, and producing perfectly acceptable work — right up until turret wear starts showing in the parts.

That is the decision point most Aries owners reach. The mechanical structure of these machines is heavily built and typically still sound; what has aged is the turret bores, and often the control. Neither requires replacing the machine.

How a Aries 222 turret wears

At 20 tons, the Aries 222 is a lighter, faster machine, and its turret wear pattern reflects that. wear accumulates through sheer cycle volume rather than force per hit. A high-throughput shop can put more hits through a 22-ton machine in a year than a heavy press sees in five.

With 19 stations, there is nowhere for work to hide. A compact turret means each station carries a larger share of total production, so bore wear arrives sooner than on a wide turret — but it also means a complete turret job is a smaller, cheaper scope when the time comes.

The tell is always the same: the fault stays with the station rather than following the tool. Move a tool that is producing bad parts to another station — if it runs clean there, the bore is worn, and new tooling will not change that. See holes out of round or burring on punched parts for the full diagnosis.

What sleeving a Aries 222 involves

Each worn bore is machined to a precise oversize and a hardened USA-made steel sleeve is pressed in with an interference fit, restoring the station to Amada factory tolerance — typically within 0.0002″. Engineers travel to you; the Aries 222 never ships. 2–3 days of downtime, typically $8,000–$25,000 depending on scope. After the first install your own maintenance staff can replace sleeves in future.

Set against $100,000–$500,000+ for a replacement machine — see sleeve or replace, including where replacing genuinely wins.

Is the Aries 222 a thick or thin turret machine?

The Aries 222 is a thin turret machine. Thick and thin describe the turret, not automatically the tooling — the two are quoted separately, and a machine has to be identified on both counts before sleeves or tooling are ordered.

Tonnage will not tell you either: several 22-ton Amada machines run thick turrets. If you are not certain what your press carries, send us the model and serial number and we will confirm it. See also thick vs thin turret and how Amada model numbers work.

Turret configurations for the Aries 222

The Aries 222 was not built with one turret. Amada offered more than one layout, so the station count does not follow from the model name — it has to be read off the machine. These are the configurations documented for this model:

A–E are Amada tool-station sizes: A ½″, B 1¼″, C 2″, D 3½″, E 4½″. A blank size column means the station and auto-index totals are confirmed but the factory A–E mix is not — we would rather leave it open than guess it.

Confirm before you quote. Because the Aries 222 exists in more than one layout, we verify the turret from the serial number or a photograph before pricing any sleeving. If you send us the serial number we will tell you which of the above you have, and how many stations that means. Send us the serial number.

What the number tells you

Amada model numbers describe the machine. The Aries 222 decodes as a 20-ton class press with a 20 × 20 table — the first digit is tonnage, the other two are table width and length. Its full designation is ARIES-202020.

How to read an Amada model number — useful when your paperwork and your badge disagree.

How the Aries 222 compares

These machines are easy to mix up, and the difference matters when you are quoting a turret job. Against the other Aries models we cover:

• Amada ACIES 2515T — control AMNC 3i, era 2010s-present.
• Amada Aries 245 — tonnage 22 ton, stations 19-20, era 1990-94.
• Amada Octo 334 — tonnage 33 ton, stations 8, control Fanuc 6M.
• Amada Vela II — tonnage 40+ ton, stations Multi, control Fanuc.
• Amada Vela II 355 — tonnage 30 ton, stations 46, control Fanuc.

Sleeving is the same process across all of them. What changes is scope, and scope follows station count and how hard the machine has been run.

The Amadan 04PA control

A Aries 222 of this vintage shipped with the Amadan 04PA. If yours is still original, it is very likely the oldest thing on the machine — and the part most likely to strand it, because a control fault on an obsolete system is harder to solve than any mechanical wear.

TSI performs FANUC-based retrofits that keep full programming compatibility, so existing programs continue to run unmodified. Done in the same visit as turret work, it is one shutdown rather than two. See control upgrades.