We have had three Methods' Feelers (2010-2011's), only one left now, a HV-1000...runs daily, mostly production stuff that it is tooled up for (we have a pair of long tombstone set up we swap in and out with a few jobs), and the odd small jobs. It is "OK" - what I usually call good basic iron, but the little crap is what annoys me the most. The "little" stuff can be a $10 float switch or something along that order, but it takes a half a day to get to it, figure it out, and get a new one in place. Do this a couple times a year and your savings are out the window.
The manufacturer is Fair Friend Enterprises out of Taiwan, so the component quality is, well, just not the best - as I was told, they have to make it cheaper somehow. All of the stuff looks nice, I just know that the life of everything is not going to be what you will find on a higher end machine. One of those annoying items is the tool clamp hydraulic booster and unclamp cylinder, both of which I have had to rebuild (or flat out buy new from Methods at ~$3k). The booster cylinder is easy, a few hours and you can knock it out, but the unclamp cylinder is quite involved, figure a full day, pulling the spindle motor in the process.
Overall, not a bad machine, just not well thought out. The side door tracks completely fill with chips making them useless and difficult to open and close, all of the machines leaked like a sieve until we got them fixed in some manner, the HV's use an 18i control, which I have to say is painfully slow and has only 256k memory loaded from Methods. The machine is blazing fast (2400" rapids), has plenty of HP (15k spindle and 30HP), so cut performance is not a limiting factor, but chip removal is - it will make snow drifts in a hurry and a shovel is the best method to get them out - don't try to push them through the conveyor, you will be pulling that apart. As the Feeler engineer visiting us said "you cut too fast, we no cover there!" while pointing to the door latch switches packed with chips. It does have a chip wash that is commanded by an M-code (and only an M-code!), but you can't use that either as you will empty the coolant tank, starving your tool in the cut. I was going to add an overhead chip wash by re-routing the plumbing and making some overhead manifolds so the nozzles would direct the chips into the augers, but after realizing the small available coolant volume, I left it alone and we try to deal with the best we can.
We are quite versed in the coolant clean-up task though, still to this day, it will puke out 10-15 gallons (primarily from the high pressure tank) on the floor for no reason. I have relocated the transfer pump, re-plumbed it to help that situation, but it still will do it every once in a while and we are not real sure why. We also added a filter in-line for the flood coolant, we just kept plugging up the check valves around the spindle housing. I suppose a good Mayfran Concept 2000 or Turbo Microfine would be in order, but it's hard to shell out $15-20k on a conveyor (if Methods has even had anyone interested) on a "cheap" vertical.
My advise, maybe find a different machine. Too bad Method's doesn't offer something better, but not the huge step in price to a Yasda. If they could offer the Yasdas at a Matsuura price, I'd be all over that!
Here's a thread from a while back - it's on a lathe, but....
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cnc-machining/need-feedback-feeler-ftc-200l-lathes-272186/
Steve
