A friend and myself are looking at an opportunity to acquire a 3000sqfy shop and a pair of Cincom citizen L20 swiss cnc along with a small customer base. If we move ahead we intend to move our two businesses together and blend a 3 in 1 since we manufacture many similar sized parts. My question is does anyone have experience with these and if there is something we should look at when we go inspect this coming Saturday. Both machines are currently operable and run in a part time environment. They would be very useful for our own products and the irony is they were already manufacturing something similar so it seems like a good opportunity to take on together. My main concern is I know what to inspect besides spindle runout and obvious things like that. Both machines have feeders and swarf conveyers. A couple photos attached. Both are essentially same.
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The Citizen and Star look to be very old machines, so you have to be concerned with part availability when things start breaking down. Suggest to run all slides in rapid and listen for any load noises.
Yama Seiki does not seem to have adequate service and support in the US
Swiss machines if taken care of can last a long time. Things to look for are bearing wear mainly. Have them turn on the spindles through various RPMs. Listen to them. If you hear anything like a whine or a grinding sound, bearings should be replaced. Also look for signs of crashes. Dented panels, missing paint etc. Ballscrews should be looked at by having the axis moved on its full range of motion
The Citizen in the thumbnail is an L320, manufactured from about 91-96. On the back of the machine about thigh high is plate with manufacture date and serial number. Based on the picture I'd guess 92-94 vintage.
Very dependable machines with wonderfull accuracy. Everything for these machines is still available through Citizen and Mitsubishi. 20mm limit on work diameter.In the picture it is up and running according to display and lights but main spindle cover is missing. Not critical but might be a sign of miss-use. Citizen offers training classes for programming if you need but I'm not sure of the cost.