Amada Vela II 355
Turret Sleeving

Amada Vela II 355 at a glance

Era

~1984-early 1990s

Tonnage

33 ton

Stations

44/2AI

Turret

Thick turret

Auto-Index

2 A/I

Control

Fanuc 6M / 04PC

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 ~1984-early 1990s 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 early Amada 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 33 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 44/2AI 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, burring on punched parts or punches dulling too fast 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 installed with a precision slip fit and secured with retaining compound, 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.

2 A/I on this machine

The Vela II 355 carries 2 A/I. Auto-index stations rotate tooling in 0.01° increments through gears, bearings and a rotary encoder mechanism — all in constant motion, all wearing. Symptoms are angular drift, indexing errors, alarm codes and parts punched off-angle.

TSI rebuilds them completely and calibrates before sign-off, routinely in the same visit as sleeving. Auto-index refurbishment · diagnosing angle errors.

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 configuration for the Vela II 355

One turret layout is documented for the Vela II 355. Amada sold the same model number with different tooling over its production life, so the station count is still worth reading off the machine rather than assuming it. This is the configuration on record:

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. We verify the turret from the serial number or a photograph before pricing any sleeving, whatever the paperwork says. Send us the serial number and we will confirm what is actually in your Vela II 355, and how many stations that means. Send us the serial number.

Station layout documented for the Vela II 355

One turret layout is documented for the Vela II 355. This is it — every station bore at its position on the turret, with its station number and the tool size that fits it.

Bore positions, bore sizes and the numbering are read from the Amada factory layout sheet. Stations are grouped, not evenly spaced — that grouping is real, and it is the quickest way to recognise your turret. Follow the link for every station listed by number and tool size.

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 early Amada models we cover:

• Amada Aries 222 — stations 10 or 12 · auto-index None documented · tonnage 20 ton.
• Amada Aries 245 — stations 20, 19 or 18, by configuration · auto-index 2 or 3, by configuration · tonnage 20 metric / 22 US ton.
• Amada Octo 334 — stations 8 or 9 · auto-index None on the documented holders; 1 B auto-index on later machines · tonnage 30-33 ton.
• Amada Vela II — stations Multi · tonnage 40+ ton · 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 Fanuc 6M / 04PC control

A Vela II 355 of this vintage shipped with the Fanuc 6M / 04PC. 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.