Who makes the best cnc machines? I am talking about a work horse.

I heard haas makes a decent light duty machine Non work horse. I also heard it isn't good if you run it 24/7.

I work with mazak now and they are always broken. Have a tech come in at least once a month

I also around with mori seiki and apperance wise and from what I seen they look pretty good.

What other machines do you like?

I like the mori seiki the best from what I seen.

Please have input. I am looking to buying some machines

Yasada has a pretty good reputation I hear, big big money, never played with one. Mazak makes some pretty impressive stuff too.

My uncle's shop runs 2 Mikino's 20hrs a day. These machines are half the travel and twice the weight of my Fadal. He has had no trouble.
VERY expensive machines.

Damn, half the travel and twice the weight, that tells you something doesn't it.

Darbee, if you saw two duplicate parts, off of both machines could you tell them apart by surface finish? Just curious.

I know that the big money can get you rigidity, and speed, but I wonder what the other advantages are to those machines. I see Makinos from the mid eighties still fetching 20-30k used so there must be something to it.

are you looking for a mill or a lathe?

I wnat a lathe first. I like the haas pricing. I am just wanting to start a shop. I doubt I will be running 24/7 to start off with but I want light outs capability just to be prepared if I ever get enough jobs in.

But I checked out haas first and The guys I know who runs haas don't have production machining just maybe 1 shirt a week.

Mori makes a great machine. I use to work for one of there distributers for 6 years. There Ballscews are last just about forever and the rigidity is excellent. Spindles also can handle some pretty hard crashes. Mori Became known back in the days for there lathes and they still have a very good reputation. From what I've heard in the field Makino also makes a good rigid and reliable machine that is comparible with a Mori.

Have you looked at Okuma?

Have you looked at Okuma?

no haven't.

But I do like the mori. Are they fairly expensive?

i have ran several mori seikis and they are a very good machine, okumas arent bad, but not as good as a mori, ikegai lathes are comparable with okumas, but i thing the best lathe for the money is dmg-gildemeister, they arent as much as mori but are impressive and comparable to mori seiki, if you are looking for something used you may want to look at hitachi seiki, they no longer make machine tools but i think they made great lathes to start with, only dislike i had was the kv tooling setup on them, they are fast, rigid, and crash-proofed better than most in my opinion. i ran 2 hitachi ht-20's and paid 26k each, and we ran the hell out of them, they were jobs that the part-timers ran and they got more than there fair share of crashes and they came back every time for more, a salesman told me the ht-20 was one of the most mass produced machine tools ever made, im sure you can find lots of them on ebay and on the net from 10k-20k, and they are worth it

wow 20k for a lathe. I was thinking I was goingto have to pay like 50k

I think you should also check out Nakamura Tome, pricy but a high quality/tech machine, have experince from a few of their models (SC-250,SC-300,TW 20) and they work great.

even less if you look, but these machines have some age to them, and by the time you round up kv tooling for the turret you will have another 2-3k in it to get setup for production. i would look for one 1993 or newer if you want to start with a good cheap lathe, i think hitachi lost a lot of retail when they went out of business, but mori seiki has taken a lot of the parts and service, mori has also took hitachi seikis design for the former hicell series and is going to market it, i beleive they are going to use the kv style turret too. parts and service shouldnt be a problem

Best CNC??
Not even an arguement, YASDA!!
Price tag is 3x that of your average CNC, and worth every penny.
The one I curently run is a 5 pallet (24x18 table) e-mail me if you'd
like more info.


PEACE:D

wow guess I am working on a budget here. Would a haas say sl10 be able to run "lights out" work?

Damn, half the travel and twice the weight, that tells you something doesn't it.

Darbee, if you saw two duplicate parts, off of both machines could you tell them apart by surface finish? Just curious.

I know that the big money can get you rigidity, and speed, but I wonder what the other advantages are to those machines. I see Makinos from the mid eighties still fetching 20-30k used so there must be something to it.

The are doing all hard steel high speed machining, comes out with damn near mirror finish most of the time.
(so I can't compare to what I do). Most of their tool-holder-insert combos are $4-$5g a set! (choke,choke).
Basically the Makinos have replaced 2 diaform type surface grinders and 2 plunge EDMs and a lot of man hours of polishing.
1 Makino = productivity of 4+ machines (for them anyway)

makino is the best machine in the world