Nexus line of VMC's

Were are planning on getting a VMC soon, Maybe a new haas, Fadal, or a used high end machine. If I am not mistaken, last year or the year before that, Mazak was showcasing their new Nexus line of mills. I forgot what the quote was, but I think it was quite comperable to the Haas prices. I wanted to know if anyone is using the nexus mills and what you think of them? Would you go with a Haas or Mazak? I am on the west coast, would service be a problem for me?
Thanks in advance!

I haven't actually used a Nexus, but I've seen them being made, hop on a plane out to Kentucky, and check it out. Mazaks making Mazaks, they reproduce themselves, its kind of scary, see how they test each machine before it leaves the factory. Then go check out the Haas factory, to see if Haas's are good enough to make Haas's.

If your worried about service, then it sounds like you expect it to break, in that case buy the Haas, from what I hear around here the sevice is excellent, then they ask me how the Mazak service is. Honestly, I don't know, never had to call them in, this is on a '95 and '98 that have been run hard for 2 years.

I wouldn't piss my money away on a machine just because they advertise a lot, and unless you absolutely need a large table size at a discount, I wouldn't buy a Fadal either. Actually I would probably buy another just because they are cheap and I could probably rebuild the whole machine in my sleep.

Just a quick comparison for you, our '95 Mazak FJV20 will easily outhog our '97Fadal 4020 3 to 1 with better tool life. One part (13-8 bunch of deep narrow tight tolerance slots) 1hr20min on the Fadal, offsets every other part, bunch of broken tools. Ran that same part on the Mazak, 45min, 40 parts, not one broken tool, never had to make an offset after the first setup piece.

One guy in town with a new Haas lathe was bragging about how great it was, holds a thou all day, hmm really our machine that is almost 8 years old will hold .0003 all day and its a predictable .0003, the literature with the machine shows graphs of time vs size and its dead nuts, let it cool for 1/2hr and it will expand .0003, run it solid for 45min and it shrinks in .0003.

Anyways, my advice is to spend your money on the best machine you can afford, if you can afford a new Chevy Cavalier, or a 4 year old Lexus, buy the Lexus.

mazak is the best sht money can buy
the new nexus stuff looked good when i looked at years back
---"If your worried about service, then it sounds like you expect it to break, in that case buy the Haas"---
haas is light duty crap
it's gonna break
and you get no prints or drawings
so you better be ready to part with service dollars
if you plan on doin' anything but onesy 2sy low power stuff
better buy a real machine
not one that has a scuba bottle holding the head up

I'd say what can be done with an FJV Mazak mill is no indication whatsoever of what you can expect from Mazak's commodity line machining centers in the Nexus line. An FJV is about as good as it gets, and the bridge design gives stiffness that can't be approached by a classic VMC layout. Nexus series VMC's share a lot more design features with Haas VMC's than they share with an FJV.

What you should buy depends on the work that it will be doing. You don't need a high end Mazak or Mori or Okuma to run aluminum parts, and you don't want a Haas or other commodity VMC if the machine will spend its life cutting tool steels and aerospace alloys. One will be overkill while the other will die a premature death due to losing its ability to hold tolerance.

Read on the Mazak web site under what ever they call customer success story.
Shop buys Nexus 410 and shaves 30-40 seconds off a 4 minuet part they were running on a Haas Mini Mill.

Should have read, shop owner realizes he can buy second Haas Mini Mills tool up with Hanita cutters and make himself some $$$.

And you think he isn't making money on the Mazak? 30-40 sec on a 4min part is hefty. At a 15% gain, you do the math over a week, ... a month.... a year....

And I'd bet, that place could gain some more even.... Most places don't utilize the HSM software to its max,... or lack some understanding of it...

Took delivery on 4-Nexus 510C mills 1-1/2 years ago. No problems except for oil line leaks on one of them. Mainly loose fittings, one hose kinked & cracked, easy fix. 12,000 RPM has been very welcome, use it all the time, warm-up not required but we do it anyway for 5 minutes each morning.

If you are going to run production 8 hours a day every day I would go with the Mazak. We had a Haas VF3 for about 1 year and it went through three spindle rebuilds. We traded it in on an Okuma mill back then. We recently traded in 4 Okumas(8-10 years old) for the Mazak Nexus mills.

Should have read, shop owner realizes he can buy second Haas Mini Mills tool up with Hanita cutters and make himself some $$$.

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That is a valid point.

Without trying to get into a "Haas vs. the world" thread,... my only point was that he insinuated he's not making $$$ due to the Nexus. For that matter, he doesn't need to buy a second machine, just tool it up better.

But, there's probably more to that "success story" than what's being discussed here....

Not saying that Mazak isn't a fine machine.
And I probably did speak out of term, not knowing what he "the Mazak success story" was making. It just struck me as a what the f*uck, if it's being made on a Haas Mini Mill and you can only speed up the a 4 minuet operation by 30'ish seconds by spending $90+G.
We have two Mazak Nexus 410 & 510 in house and you really have to jump up to push them to thier limit, it's something I'll probably never see.

What does the Nexus 410 cost?

I think the list prices for the 410B is around $85-90k, and the 510C is around $105-ish, but that is without any options. Also, your dealer has some flexibility, so it is better to ask them for a real price.

I think a good rule of thumb is to go to Haas's website and equip similarly...if I remember correctly, that is real close to a Nexus is terms of actual pricing. This had me scratching my head until I considered that Haas will come off their list price quite a bit, so I'm guessing a 30 or 40 inch Nexus will end up costing 15-20% more than a comparable Haas, when you get through with all the haggling. I think this is a no-brainer for that difference.

I got a quote for the -HS variant and the price jumped about $25k. (!) There are some significant differences, but I am still a little shocked.

I feel like an idiot to not get a 4th with a Nexus machine. If you get a 4th with your initial purchase, they make it very worthwhile. We don't need a 4th right now, but that pricing really gets me thinking.

There is so much talk about the FJV/VTC type machines, that has my attention. Anybody want to give up the ballpark pricing for one of those?

It just struck me as a what the f*uck, if it's being made on a Haas Mini Mill and you can only speed up the a 4 minuet operation by 30'ish seconds by spending $90+G.

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You didn't read the story right.

From the article....

A program running on a Haas mini mill was loaded onto High Tech Turning’s Nexus 410A, and without any changes the Nexus cut 45 seconds out of a four-minute cycle time, a nearly 20% reduction. Other medical parts run on the Nexus machine achieved nearly 50% reduction in cycle time,

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Note the part that says "without any changes". They took a program from one machine and with no changes to speed/feed, the Mazak cut the part faster. At this point, optimize the program for the Nexus and see how much more you can speed up the program.... You'll make up the 90G difference in no time and be looking for more work to throw at it.

We have some FJV's but can't recall the pricing offhand. I would suspect it might be a tad more than the Nexus line. But you might be surprised as well.

We had a Nexus 410 quoted about 6months ago. I forgot the specifics on the model but it was around 100K. Sounded pretty good to me and it did seem to come with a lot more things then a base model Haas. Unfortunatly the 410 will be too small for our needs, if we ever do get the budget to get into CNC.


Hardinge/Bridgeport seems to have some nice machines at pretty good prices too. Probably worth looking at.

We had a 510C quoted a short while ago. Base was around 96K or so. A decent pile of options, (you really don't need that many, the machine is euquipped rather nicely as it is) Programmable chip conveyor, a few control options, high pressure through the spindle coolant, came to 126K with a 10K kennametal certificate, so without the certificate, save maybe 7k, bring it in at 119k.

I went to the Haas site and optioned up as close as I could get and came to 114k, probably cheaper with package deals and what not, but its still a no-brainer.

"and the 510C is around $105-ish, but that is without any options."

our 510c was $105,000 with chip augers, chip conveyer, and thru spindle coolant.