Dear Robert,
First of all I would like to thank for your valuable time you spend with me over the phone talking about the Toyoda vertical mills. The reason why I’m posting here is because we talked a lot about the Toyoda BM 1600 it self but not enough about the company’s behind the product… Also, I don’t want to abuse more of your precious time!
This post may look a little biased; however my goal is to work as a professional and bring the right information to the customers. Here are the facts about Toyoda Machine Works.
Prior to 1977, companies with a long tradition in manufacturing machine tools which included Ikegai, Okuma, Toshiba Machine Tools, Hitachi Precision Works, and Toyoda Machine Works, were called the "Big 5," and occupied the largest market share in the industry. They had a long tradition in producing machine tools, especially Ikegai which was one of the oldest companies in this industry. The Toyoda Machine Works was established as an affiliate of Toyota Motor Corporation, and produced machine tools mainly for its parent company. Now Toyoda runs as a separate entity and builds precision machine tools like Vertical, Horizontals, 5 axis and Grinders for the whole world.
Toyoda has been recognized over the years as a top quality machine tool manufacturer. As a comparison, they are at the same level as Mitsui Seiki. In fact, they were merged not a long time ago. They have proven to be in the upper sphere of machine tools, not a lot of competition at this level!!! Their proven machines are geared to machine difficult materials and known to keep tight tolerances years after years.
As far their vertical mills, how can they build an affordable top quality machine in a saturated market? Well, like many others Japanese machine tool builders, Toyoda has asked one of the largest Taiwanese machine tool manufacturers, Awea Mechantronic, to build their mills as per their specifications. Are they less good for that reason? No! Absolutely not! The Toyoda mills are not just rebranded Awea machines, they were severely modified. All major critical components like bearings, ball screws, control…. and more, are from Japan. Also Toyoda asked to bring new technology into the machine like a modern counter balance to prevent head vibration, more powerful spindle, increased table weight capacity, faster, overall tighter tolerances and more.
We have to consider also that we are in 2007 and we haven’t seen new technology for many decades into the Verticals. Asian manufacturers maybe not up front into design imagination but we have to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, they are capable of producing outstanding casting, heavily ribbed at a much lower price. This is one of the reasons why we often see, for a comparable size, that Asian castings are a lot heavier than its Japanese counterparts. Let’s say that they are not shy to pour metal! If I can speak for Awea, their casting design is based on FEM analysis and meets high ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certificates by TÜV Germany quality standards.
Is it a good move from Toyoda without making a sacrifice to their reputation? I think that Toyoda brings to the market the best of both worlds, current Japanese technology into a solid non-compromised proven casting design. I’ve seen one of their small BM series machine cutting hard metal and I can say that their verticals are up to the level of their other machines line-up manufactured in Japan, a solid and powerful machine filled with a generous package. Exactly at the level of Toyoda reputation.
How they are represented in North America? Well they have a pretty large network with over 50 dealers. They have a warehouse based in Illinois were they have over 10M $ of spare parts that you can order from 7:00AM to 11:00PM with a complete customer support. Here in Canada, Toyoda is represented by Elliott Machinery, a well known distributor reputed for their first class customer service. Elliott is in business for more than 50 years selling quality machine tool. Their business concept reflects pretty well what they are (
http://elliottmachinery.com/business-concept.html). Maritimes installs are serviced by four service engineers and two application engineers based in Quebec, not far from your location. To be honest, they don’t have as many installs like other popular machine builders but Elliott do care of their customers. I will send you reference located in your neighborhood.
Robert, I sincerely hope this will help you in your decision,
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Best regards,
Charles Jean
Elliott Machinery
