Amada Vipros 345
Turret Sleeving

Amada Vipros 345 at a glance

Era

mid-1990s

Tonnage

30-33 ton

Stations

58

Turret

Thick turret

Auto-Index

2 A/I

Control

Fanuc 04PC

The Vipros line ran 1995–2005 and is out of production. These machines are young enough to be thoroughly capable and old enough to have real turret hours on them — the most common profile we are called to.

Where this machine is in its life

A Vipros 345 built in mid-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 Vipros 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 Vipros 345 turret wears

At 30 tons, the Vipros 345 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 58 stations, work is spread across a wide turret, which is why wear on these machines is so rarely uniform. In practice a handful of stations carry the common tools and wear out well ahead of the rest. Most Vipros 345 jobs are partial as a result — the worn stations are sleeved and the sound ones are left alone, which keeps both cost and downtime down.

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 Vipros 345 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 Vipros 345 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 Vipros 345 carries 2 auto-index stations of its 58. 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 Vipros 345 a thick or thin turret machine?

The Vipros 345 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 Vipros 345

The Vipros 345 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 Vipros 345 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 Vipros 345 decodes as a 30-ton class press with a 40 × 50 table — the first digit is tonnage, the other two are table width and length. Its full designation is VIPROS-304050.

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

How the Vipros 345 compares

Smaller Vipros; auto/HVAC use — that is what sets this machine apart on the spec sheet.

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

• Amada Vipros 357 — tonnage 33 ton, control Amadan 04PC, era 1996-2003.
• Amada Vipros 358 King — auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P, era 1998-2003.
• Amada Vipros 2510 King — tonnage 22 ton, stations 31, auto-index 3 A/I.
• Amada Vipros 358 King II — tonnage 33 ton, auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P.
• Amada Vipros 358 Queen — the same on paper for turret purposes.
• Amada Vipros 255 — tonnage 20 ton, stations 31, auto-index 4 A/I.
• Amada Vipros 357 Queen — tonnage 33 ton, control Fanuc 18P, era 1999-2003.
• Amada Vipros 367 Queen — tonnage 33 ton, auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P.
• Amada Vipros 368 King — auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P, era 1997-2005.
• Amada Vipros 368 King II — tonnage 33 ton, auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P.
• Amada Vipros 368 Queen — the same on paper for turret purposes.
• Amada Vipros III Z3510NT — tonnage 33 ton, stations 45, auto-index 4 A/I.
• Amada Vipros Z3510 Queen — tonnage 33 ton, auto-index 4 A/I, control Fanuc 18P.
• Amada Vipros 568 — tonnage 55 ton, era 1998.

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 04PC control

A Vipros 345 of this vintage shipped with the Fanuc 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.

Amada Vipros 345 documentation

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Full libraries: manuals and parts lists.