Hyundai hit 30s cnc lathe purchase

[weldthis]

Hello all.... Im thinking of purchasing a cnc lathe with at least 36" between centers and 9" swing I found a hyundai hit-30s and am not at all familiar with this lathe. IT is 500 miles away and I want to make sure its worth taking a look at... Sounds like a pretty nice lathe and would hopefully beat the pants off my old cazenueva 27 hb and my south bend Turnado engine lathes.. THe control is a siemens 840 c, 12" chuck, programmable tailstock, 2001 model with mostly carbon steel and 316 ss materials turned...

Any information would be greatly appreciated.. What do I need to look for, Any weak links, parts support, any idea on what it should be worth.. This large purchase scares me, Ive only been in business for a year and this could make or break me....

THanks again everybody...

[Tedger]

We have 2 Hit-30M with live tooling that use Siemans 840D control.They have proven to be dependable workhorses.I would say that the live tooling on the Duplomatic turret has given us trouble occasionally but I believe that the Hit30-s does not have live tool.The Siemans control takes some getting used to if your going to use the conversational programing(We don't).
One of our lathes had the Z-axis ball screw rebuilt before we bought it.
The other blew an IGBT in the spindle drive for no apparent reason but I got a new drive off Flea-bay for $800.
Siemans stuff is readily available but service for either the lathe or electronics is very poor here in Phoenix.You pretty much have to do all your own troubleshooting.That said,I would not hesitate to purchase another if I had need.I would value each of our lathes at around $40K but I haven't priced anything lately so I could be full of it.
What kind of condition is the lathe? Pictures?
Feel free to contact me for any help I can give.(For what thats worth!)

[RevEdo]

All depends on the price. Hyundai-Kia are now considered a quality machine, back in 2001???? Also, keep in mind, most lenders are willing to lend more money on new machines. Check out Intech Funding, you'll be surprised.

[RevEdo]

Here is one way to look at it.Loans on machine tools, you can pretty much use a factor of 2%. Lets use a nice easy figure of $100,000 purchase, for sake of ease. Your payment will be right around $2000/month. Your shop rate should be no less than $40/hr and in most places its easily double that. So lets take $40 as an example. Lets say for some odd reason, you can only keep that spindle running for 140 hours a month. Thats 4800 bucks a month. AND, I am sure we are talking prolly less than half this purchase price for the machine you are looking at. If you can't keep a machine running for 3 weeks out of a month, then you should prolly think about another career. Or don't buy any more equipment.