I am considering purchasing a Tree 325 . Owner states has had controls rebuilt (Dynapath 20) new crt, spindle bearings. Mill is about 1988 model. What would a mill like this be worth? Realizing the owner has spent some money and seems to be in good condition,still holds pretty good tolerance, it's still close to 20 years old. I have been out of cnc for a while (paper tape era) This is for a small home shop and looking for a knee type mill that doesn't take alot of space . Any input woild be appreaciated. Thanks

Welcome to the board, bvweld!

Scott

bvweld,

Give Bob Norman from ZPS a call... He was with Tree for many years and is of those guys that doesn't mind helping out. His number is 847-487-4353 ext. 202. Or you can email him at bob@zpsusa.com.

Good luck with the new addition.

I paid $5K for my 325 with Delta 20. Compared to doing a conversion on my manual Bport clone mill that seemed like money well spent. I've seen one person who found one for about $600 and others that have been advertised by dealers up around $10K.

The 325 is about as short as you are going to find.

I pulled the X and Y ballscrews and put fresh balls in (and cleaned the junk out of them and also about 3 gallons of chips from the inside of the knee). The Y tightened up noticeably with the new balls but the X didn't, so it looks like X got the majority of the work (not surprising since that is the long axis). Even so, backlash on Y is about .0002" and about .0006" on X. I can live with that for now and I'm hoping backlash comp will take care of some of that.

cheers,
Michael

I ended up buying mine for $5200. It would be hard to pay $8K to $10K for one and feel good about it IMO. The one's at dealers are still there. I looked around for a while. I bought a Phase Perfect phase converter rather than try my rotary. I was concerned about my phase to phase voltage balance and input voltage. Still have to get it moved into position and get it wired in. I hope mine is in as good of shape as yours from the sounds of it. Thanks for the reply.

I run mine off of a 10hp Phase Perfect.

$5K seems a pretty reasonable price. The 325 is way sturdier than a converted Bridgeport type mill. Did you get the 6000 RPM spindle or the 3000/3200 RPM version?

It wouldn't hurt to flush all your lube lines out and make sure the little metering orifices aren't plugged. Clean out the tank and start it off with fresh lube.

One thing to watch out for: don't raise the knee to the top and then push the table in Y back towards the column and then drop the knee. That stop bolt between the knee ways will catch under the sliding metal chip guard plates on top of the knee and bend them up. You won't get them off to flatten them back out without pulling the table.

But when you pull the table you might as well put fresh balls in the screws and do more cleaning. I did. :)

There's a copy of a Tree brochure on my website if you have any interest in that:

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/metalwork/treebrochure/

I got replacement axis drive belts from MSC. I figured starting off with fresh ones was a reasonable thing to do. The spindle drive belt had to be special ordered from a local bearing shop.

cheers,
Michael

One thing to watch out for: don't raise the knee to the top and then push the table in Y back towards the column and then drop the knee. That stop bolt between the knee ways will catch under the sliding metal chip guard plates on top of the knee and bend them up. You won't get them off to flatten them back out without pulling the table.


I have the 3K spindle. Funny you mentioned about the chip guard. I think this has happened sometime in it's life. It looks like they cut the damaged rear portion of the chip guard off and removed the stop. It had a rubber chip shield covering behind the table. I really hate to have to take that table off. It was fairly clean down in the casting/knee area. Might do that after I get it up and running.

I am also looking at getting into CNC milling with a 325.

I am sure people interested in this area (Tree forum) did a bit of research. What similar mills did you consider?

I am interested in the 27x14" travel these machines offer and the 80" height since I would need to get it into a small shop with limited access and ceiling space.

Has anyone upgraded to newer PC controller?

Where is a good source for machines and possibly machines to rebuild (may be worthwhile to take a problem machine and update if the price is attractive enough.

If you lower the quill, remove the quill cap and the motor cover plate you can squeeze a 325 through a 79" high garage door. Barely.

I put a Centroid control on mine.

I take it the quill cover doesn't reduce the overall height of the machine that much then. Looks like 80" is about all I have to work with for height so it would be tight.
Was the Centroid conversion a controller only or system refit?

The quill cover is 6+ inches tall, so taking it off seems significant since not taking it off means it wouldn't have gone in the garage. :)

I reused the existing servo motors and the various transformers and some terminal strips and things like that. The OEM contactors were 120v and I had to replace them as the Centroid system was designed around 24v. I also needed limit switches at each end of an axis where the Delta 20 used a central switch for each axis.

The system boots as Centroid but I didn't buy their "here's a cabinet with all the servos and pendant/console wired up" standard package. I used my own monitor and keyboard which gives me a nice easy to read 17" color LCD. The Dynapath Delta 20 had a small (8"?) monochrome monitor that had some "burn in" issues and I found it pretty hard to read. Since things are not getting any easier to read as I get older I couldn't see trying to fight with that. If I want a tiny monochrome monitor I'll go out and see if I can buy a Kaypro as a conversation piece. :)

The Tree with Delta20 was a working system when I got it but I went straight to the control conversion. I must say that it seems pretty nice to not need to worry about DNC/drip feed or putting things on floppies since the Centroid accepts an external USB drive. I think the bootable card drive that I have in it now is 1G (bigger than stock) too so storage is not an issue.

I bought most all of the software options as well as the tool setter and probe. Now I just need to get to the point where I know how to make productive use of all that stuff! But the conversational part of the control seems pretty easy for a CNC newbie to work with.

btw, are you the "MechWerks" from chopperweb?

cheers,
Michael

Yes..same MechWerks! Sorry I didn't realize the connection.

Just started to get 24 hours out of a day and now want to see if 26 is possible with a CNC mill.

From what I have seen, the 325 is listed as 80" tall. That is why I was surprised that removing the quill cover only took it down enough to squeek under a 79" door...so I guess I have not figured things out yet.

It seems a contol conversion would be the way to go. PC based controls allow a lot of potential change by just loading software and not a lot of hardware changes (which seem extreemely expensive in the industrial market).

I started following some of your various posts on this forum and another..giving me a lot of information for thought. Thank you for taking the time to put up some of your experience for us less informed to follow.

I've only made a few posts at chopperweb and that was a while back so I wouldn't expect you to have recognized me, especially since I had to truncate my full name to get it into the username field here.

You'll also find a moderate number of posts from different Tree 325 owners over in the CNC forum at Practical Machinist.

http://www.eurospares.com/mills.htm

has a Tree brochure that covers the 325 and also shows my machine being delivered and the garage door it had to squeeze through.

I should have just used the 325 with the Dynapath and gotten more experience with things before doing the control conversion, but I get impetuous some times. :) I'm not an electrician and I'd never done anything like that before so there was a lot of "hmmmm, what do I do now?" time in the process, along with also needing an electrical service upgrade to my house and getting a Phase Perfect so I'd have 3 phase.

On the other hand I do pretty much know what all those parts are in the cabinet, since I"m the one who had to put them in there and figure out how to hook them up.

If you get a 325 with the 6K spindle and missing the OEM spindle drive (mine came with a Yaskawa drive and 8K spindle motor) don't try to run it with a sensorless VFD. I had a 5hp SJ100 Hitachi and it just wasn't up to the job. I eventually got hooked up with a Control Techniques SP Unidrive drive that utilized the encoder on the spindle motor for feedback and that made a huge difference. It was also way less expensive (though not cheap) than the "solution" that Yaskawa wanted to sell me when I contacted them about a replacement for the original drive.

cheers,
Michael

I have been looking at various "tool room" type mills and by the time you get to a 14" Y they no longer fit under a door...and the HP makes the phase converter jump significantly in price. The Phase Perfect is attractive in feature...and harsh in cost.
Trying to "come in" at a low investment is tough and even tougher when you really don't know what a machine has been doing for it's life. Have been up to the Practical Machinist site too...I am fairly decent at searching out info on the web and the sharing of others helps a lot with getting a grasp on what can be done.
I like the path of familiarity in a machine tool so when it gets ill you can diagnose and fix the problem. Unfortunately, that is not always the case in older machines as the technology varies considerably. A PC controller is getting to be a decent option for refit as the industrial crowd seems to be stuck in the old paradigms of the past.