Amada Vela II 355
Turret Sleeving

Amada Vela II 355 at a glance

Era

1980s-90s

Tonnage

30 ton

Stations

46

Turret

Thick turret

Control

Fanuc

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 Vela II 355 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 Vela II 355 turret wears

At 30 tons, the Vela II 355 sits in the workhorse band — mixed duty, mixed material, and usually the machine a shop reaches for first. That versatility is also why its turret wears: it runs the widest range of work, and the stations holding the most-used tools take a disproportionate share of the hits.

With 46 stations, a Vela II 355 turret usually shows wear concentrated in the positions running the most common tooling. Sleeving does not have to be all-or-nothing — the worn stations are done and the rest are left as they are.

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 Vela II 355 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 Vela II 355 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 Vela II 355 a thick or thin turret machine?

The Vela II 355 is a thick 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 Vela II 355

The Vela II 355 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 Vela II 355 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 Vela II 355 decodes as a 30-ton class press with a 50 × 50 table — the first digit is tonnage, the other two are table width and length. Its full designation is VELA-305050.

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

How the Vela II 355 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 222 — tonnage 20 ton, stations 19, control Amadan 04PA.
• Amada Aries 245 — tonnage 22 ton, stations 19-20, control Amadan 04PA.
• Amada Octo 334 — tonnage 33 ton, stations 8, control Fanuc 6M.
• Amada Vela II — tonnage 40+ ton, stations Multi.

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 Fanuc control

A Vela II 355 of this vintage shipped with the Fanuc. 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.