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Any recent purchase feedback? Hello,
I am in the market for a CNC mill of about the size of the IH. Having compared the specs, talking to the vendors (including Tommy), and reading the various forums I am inclined toward the IH, largely due to the greater Y & Z travels available.
My biggest concern with IH is the apparent spate of slow delivery and poor communication that seems to have come up last summer. My preference would be to get the mill and CNC retrofit kit to do the work myself (I like to know how my tools work, what goes into them, etc), however it seems that delivery of the necessary parts may suffer in sacrifice to the turnkey mill orders.
I am wondering if anyone here has had any recent purchases (CNC, retrofit-kits, rotary tables, ?), and how the experience went in terms of delivery time and promptness of communication when/if delays or issues arose.
Thank you for your time,
-Erik
Missed your post earlier.
If you dig back through the threads, you'll see where those of us who ordered kits were put in line behind people who were buying turnkey systems. I don't know if that's still the case.
I submitted an email question to support over the weekend and haven't heard anything back. I just called the # on the web site and got a default-answering-machine message that didn't identify IH, so I dunno what's up.
I am expecting a quote anytime this year.
Sliding down the razor blade of life.
It seems like when Gene passed away it has all gone down hill. What a shame
I agree. I've called/emailed several times in the past month trying to get the final few pieces and the sw key for MACH3, Tommy promised to send it out over a month ago but I'm still looking at an empty mailbox.
Ive seen elsewhere the same thing. Customers havent gotten the mach 3 key or the Dolphin cam key. IH was seeming to come along great for a while. hmm
My recent conversations with Tommy have lead me to believe that supplier delays are still a reality. That said, I'll echo an earlier post and suggest that a turn-key order will likely be completed prior to a kit order.
I was caught up in the delays of last year as heavily as anyone (with a turn-key order) and the only thing I can say is that it eventually arrived and I've been quite happy with it. There have been problems, most of which due to my own ineptitude (burned out the Y motor a while back, etc...), but on the whole it's been an amazing machine to learn on. I certainly don't think Tormach or Novakon would have been superior in any general way.
High on my list of selling points has been the generic components used on the IHCNC. If I blow up a drive, I can replace it with one off the shelf. I considered a used industrial machine, but hearing about the cost of replacement parts slowed me way down on that.
After I placed an order, Tommy gave me his cell phone number. He's still hard to get ahold of during the week days as answering the phone requires him to stop working on a given task, but I've called many times on the weekend and he's always been very happy to talk.
Receiving the Dolphin license required having Tommy call Dolphin to confirm that the purchase took place, then they sent me a license. It's been useful, but suffers on the CAD side. You'll also want to get a dongle key rather than the software key unless your PC is on a constant internet connection.
For what it's worth,
Ken.
>That said, I'll echo an earlier post and suggest that a turn-key order will likely be >completed prior to a kit order.
They both use the same parts. Shipping parts to someone who ordered a turn-key after someone else who ordered a kit is not right. It's been over a year and a half since I placed my order and I'm still missing parts. If the same parts are going out on turnkeys ordered after I placed my order, that's just not right.
As far as licenses, I've spoken with Tommy on the phone and followed up with phone and email messages and have nothing a month later.
Thus my complaint to the CT Attorney General that goes out next week, to be followed up with a nastygram from my lawyer.
I'm resurrecting my thread, as this is the kind of information I would have wanted when I was buying:
I have used small manual mills before as a hobby, but this was to be my first CNC machine. Some of the parts I work on are fairly large, so the range of travel the IHCNC mill offered above the others (Tormach, Novakon, etc) was very valuable to me.
In Feb of 2011 I ordered a turnkey mill from Tommy. Initial delivery date was to be April, with payment spread into thirds. As the date got closer the shipment kept pushing back till I held back the last payment for delivery. I received the mill at the end of July, so about 2x the quoted delivery time.
The mill was well packed, though missing the stepper-driven rotary table I had ordered with it (cabinet wiring and stepper driver was included however). Inspection of the mill showed there was no spindle lock (minor, but an annoyance).
Other initial impressions:
I had ordered the VFD with 2hp motor, but was delivered the 3hp (fine by me)
Max Y would allow the table to hit the way-oil distribution manifold
No way covers or anything protecting the ball-screws
The drive belts are protected by clear acrylic covers held on with large hose-clamps. 2 of the 3 were cracked. Still functional though
No documentation on anything (much was findable online once I saw what the components were)
Manual knobs on the ends of the ball-screws are very small (near useless), so backing off of limit switches must be done in software (Mach3 was not so configured)
Control box has a nice exhaust fan, but no inlet for fresh air to come through.
I setup the mill and turned the control box and computer on. Mach3 was installed on the computer, with a custom profile for the mill.
Some jogging tests showed the Y and Z axis home-switches were swapped in Mach-3 (shared with limits on each axis), and travel directions were backwards (not swapped) on Y and Z. Otherwise the configuration was sensible. Luckily I didn't try to home the machine right away or it would have gone right past the limits since Mach3 only looks at the home currently being explored, but looks at all limits when jogging.
Other than just turning on the spindle for a couple seconds to verify control, I did not run the gearbox much as I wanted to tear it down and check everything. This proved to be good, as the initial run of the spindle was VERY noisy relative to what I now know it should be.
The gearbox had a fair bit of thread tapping remnants inside, presumably the result of factory tapping of the bolt-holes to mount the lid (after the inside was cleaned and painted). The bearings were all sealed, but had been HORRIBLY abused during assembly. 3/4 of the transmission bearings looked (and felt) as if they had been pressed off-angle onto the shafts, and pounded into the bearing holes by the shafts, denting the races with the balls. The notchyness was very pronounced, and I would suspect this is a bigger problem than the iron bits in the oil, as those were mostly too big to get past the seals.
I flushed out the gearbox with diesel, cleaned it, dropped in a big magnet to catch further debris, replaced all the bearings, and put AC bearings in for the spindle (though the original conical bearings seemed in OK shape, with plenty of grease, and no noticeable metal bits).
After reassembling the head and tramming it, I did a few tests using some of the Mach3 wizards. The gearbox was significantly quieter, though still loud at the faster gears. I spent some time learning Mach3 and setting up soft-limits to prevent the table and vice from mashing into the oil-distribution manifold.
From the start I had a problem with spurious E-Stops indicated in Mach3 (which shut the machine down and generally ruin whatever I was working on) for a while. Discussions with Tommy, and then the fine folks at PMDX (control boards) led to discovery of multiple issues: loose power wires to some of the servo drivers (so under high demand the drives would fault), no debounce configured in Mach3 for the incoming signals, and a software bug in Mach3 where after some time of running it sends the spindle off into the weeds when doing interpolated arcs (with no acceleration accounted for, causing the servos to fault).
While using the machine I found that the Z axis has about 4thou of measurable back-lash when the gibs are tightened enough to keep the head from dropping under its own weight. A lot of measuring and checking things leads me to believe this is due to slop between the ball-nut housing and the head-carriage. I have not fixed this yet as loosening the Z-axis gib ever so slightly has remedied the problem enough for the work I have been doing. X and Y backlash were well under 1thou.
My rotary table arrived in late August after numerous calls and emails. But the promised spindle lock was not included. The packaging of the table was a bit sloppy, and it had cut the wires leading out of the stepper, but easily fixable.
Finally, after another YEAR of monthly pestering, I got the spindle lock and installed it last week. The mill is now physically complete as ordered.
I am happy to have the mill, and it seems a reasonable deal overall, however the time required to get all the parts was frustrating. Additionally, the added work I had to do (gearbox bearings, install spindle lock, bad Mach3 home and axis configuration, debug E-Stops due to loose wires/no de-bounce) are not quite what I would have expected from a turn-key machine with a tested configuration.
When time permits I will move the oil manifold to the side to free up almost an inch of extra Y travel to the column, and remove the head to figure out a way to get rid of the slop in Z.
Throughout it all Tommy has been polite, but his availability waxes and wanes on the phone, and is pretty much non-existant via email.
-e
Thankfully, I finally sold my IH CNC mill last year because of problems with the machine and terrible customer support. If I could reach Tommy, I had always gotten a constant stream of excuses (and I mean constant). In my experience, a company that is full of constant excuses is on the edge financially. Personally, I would avoid them. If they could get a capital injection and great business manager, maybe they could do well.
Frankly, I have had many instances where it appeared like Tommy was just lying to me about things. Things just didn't add up much of the time.
It felt like he was in over his head with a backlog of problems. It's possible to be a nice guy and a very poor business person.
- Jim
PS - If I where to do it again, I would only go with a company that has great reviews on their customer support. What I noticed with Tommy was, it appeared like he would answer your phone calls if the thought he was getting money from you...after you paid or if there is a problem, good luck.
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