would you buy a 1996 15xt with 88HS control ?

[tricky]

Hi folks,
we are outing our 4 cinci' Arrow 500 vmc's and A2100 control all around 1996.

The A2100 is a good (when it works) but a bit tempremental control which isn't supported very well any more and very expensive to fix.

We have been offered 4 very well looked after fadal 15xt's 20atc 1995-1998 all with 88HS control and wondered if this would be a step backwards rather than just sideways or not ?

Most of our work is aluminium and we would rather be buying 4 used Matsuura's with 15k spindles, but they just don't exist on the uk used market.

we ocasionally streem huge programs over ethernet when we do tool work and the A2100 control has a huge memory / hard drive without even using the ethernet.

I've seen www.calmotion.com/usbcncfadsw.html which would give us similar functionality though.

Its just lots of people seem to like these machines, we have been offered these at a reasonable rate, but 1/2 of me thinks that the 88hs control will be like using a TRS80 instead of a apple mac or windows pc ?

Are they worth having or past it like our A2100 arrows ?

[donnelson]

i have 2 15"s one is xt one regular we use mastercam to program i love using them the system is easy to learn and i like the tool setups and the fixture setups have calmotion usb systems on both machines i really like the total package and for the money you cant beat them both of mine are 96 models. ive made a ton of money on them

[tricky]

Did you have Fanuc or other experience before you got into Fadal's ?

[ltmquik]

In my opinion you should trust your 1/2 about the control and the age of the machine. They are going to perform about the same as the mills you have now. You also have to purchase additional hardware to support your ethernet needs along with the learning curve for those (I don't know much about the "calmotion" products).

There should be alot of competitively priced new machines to suit your needs. I would also consider that with a new machine you will be increasing your output due to the faster machine and better technology.