Travis,
Your mentioned that you are considering Esprit so I thought that I would give you my thoughts on that. We are using Esprit for all of our milling, turning and turn/mill machines. Our turn/mills include a Mazak Integrex (dual spindle and B-axis head) and a Mori Seiki ZT1500YB (dual spindles and dual turrets). D.P. Tech has successfully supplied us with post for both of these machines.
We bought Esprit and the Integrex at the same time and Esprit was supposed to come with a fully functioning post for the Integrex that would need only slight modification. This turned into a painful experience (that eventually worked out well) that was due to the fact that the we were unfamiliar with Esprit, unfamiliar with the Integrex and unfamiliar with the g-code for Mazaks Fusion 640MT pro control (twin spindle and B-axis were also both new to us). The post that we were supplied with probably worked on some flavor of Integrex machines but the posted output bombed in several areas on our control. In the end, D.P. sent a AE to our site and he was able to take care of most of the problems at that time. Other issues were taken care of later by email and it is now a pretty solid post.
I learned our lesson with that experience. When we bought the Mori, we bought the post for it from D.P. (again, fully functioning with only slight modification needed), but this time I arranged for a AE from D.P. and a AE from the Mori dealership to be on our site at the same time to get a part that I had programmed to run on our machine. Well, this time the post really did need only slight modification and we were up and running on that machine very quickly. I would suggest doing something similar if it is critical that you get a machine producing parts as quickly as possible.
I have made many modification to these post myself (mostly for simple to moderate fixes) and I have had D.P. make changes if it tool difficult for me. They have some very sharp AE's and I have found that they are usually quick and responsive to support their product.
One word of caution; if you do buy another CAM system, make sure that ANY agreements or promises made verbally are put into writing. This really goes with any purchase, but...
Good luck,
Daryl  |