My company is looking to purchase our first swiss machine. We are looking at the Citizens L20 XII and the Star SR-20RIV. These are both fully loaded machines with a programmable B axis. We have seen both of these machines in person running our own parts. For all intensive purposes these machines are the same.

We run a lot of tight tolerance parts... +-.00025, and one of our concerns is being able to restart a process. We know it is not feasible on long parts or going back multiple processes. I know that the Star has a restart feature built in but we were told by our Citizens rep that in order to do any type of mid program restart you have to program in macros. I don't see this as too big of a problem for myself, as I am the one who is going to be handling this machine to begin with. My bosses concern is when we go to put anyone else on the machine down the roads. We have a tendency to hire guys that can handle complex programming or programming at all really as we are a mostly Mazak shop with 2 Okuma MTMs that I am in charge of. So I guess basically ease of operation.

The other big thing is service and support for both the machines in the Metro Detroit area, I ould like to know some personal experiences from others not recommended by the distributor. The distributors are Addy Machine for the Star and Dynamic for the Citizens.

This is our first Swiss purchase but we plan to add more and we just want want is going to be easiest to train others to run and setup.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Similar Threads: