Advice on Hafco turret mill

[blown_vu]

Hi peoples, been a member for a few years just lurking & learning. Have made up my mind to purchase a turret style mill. This will be used for general milling steel & aluminium, also engine blocks & heads.
After a year of looking around one of the brands I’m looking at purchasing is a Hafco BM-70VE.
Has anyone got any information on this mill, accuracy, reliability etc?

https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/Pr...ockCode=M630D#

Thanks for any info.
John

[RCaffin]

After a year of looking around one of the brands I’m looking at purchasing is a Hafco BM-70VE.

Hafco ... been there, regretted it a few times.

However:
Made in Taiwan
3-phase
40 Int

All good points.

Cheers

[blown_vu]

Hafco ... been there, regretted it a few times.

Cheers

Thanks RCaffin for the reply.
What problems have you had with this model mill or do you mean Hafco brand in general.

The other mills on my list are also Taiwanese made, but they come in 8 to 12 grand abouve the BM70ve by the time you spec them up to the Hafco.

John

[chich2]

I have a HAFCO Mill and a Hafco Lathe. You get what you pay for. So if you are going to be in full scale production, Don't buy one. But if you into hobby jobs then I would fully support buying one. There is not one job I have not been able to do on my machines yet.

If you start making some seriuos money with the machine then it may be that you just buy a new one every couple of years????

I converted an HM-52 to cnc a few years back now and use it a lot at home. Still does everything I need to do.
See the thread here: http://www.cnczone.com/forums/vertic...onversion.html

Chich

[RCaffin]

What problems have you had with this model mill or do you mean Hafco brand in general.

Hafco import machines from several countries. The low-end stuff they inmport from China are ... well, as others have said, rather cheap and give problems.

For instance, while some parts of my Chinese lathe are OK, none of the fasteners are acceptable. I had to replace them with Unbrakos. I had to fix some other problems too.
The Chinese bandsaw was OK, but the stand was defective and I had to fix it.
The Chinese quick-change tool post works, but some of the tool holders fractured shortly after receipt.

An equal or bigger worry was that when I tried to discuss these problems with Hafco I was completely ignored. I sent several letters about the problems, but never got a single reply.

A friend's company was buying a larger lathe and was looking at a Hafco Chinese one. I suggested they look at a very similar one from Taiwan, but for various reasons they went with the Chinese one. Yep, similar problems with various parts of the machine - mostly at the accessory level. They have had to spend time fixing the machine.

But machines from Taiwan have a fairly good reputation. I have a Taiwanese mill and I am very happy with it.

And I had better add that I have bought some ER collet chucks direct from a Hong Kong company, made in China, and found that their quality is excellent. I can't measure the runout: the chucks are better than my lathe!

There are old State machinery companies in China which you need to stay away from, and there are new privately owned machinery companies often with western management (or Chinese trained in the west) which are very good. I buy carbide cutters from one: their CNC machines are from Germany, and so are the carbide blanks they use. But how to tell one class from another? Ah, there's the problem.

Cheers
(Mind you, I have had grief from USA conmpanies too.)