Top this - I was at an auction in FL yesterday and got to talking with a guy wanting to bid on the Eurotech 5 axis turn center. The subject of his 2000 year Gildemeister CTX400 turn center with Siemens 810D control came up.
Keep in mind this is all from a stranger to me, so the whole story should include the manufacturer/distributor side, but at my age and having been around my share of BS, I can read people pretty well and the guy seemed as straight up as they get, get so all sounds plausable to me.
Still, as we haven't heard both sides on the machine side I won't say if tech was from manuf. or distributor. But on the control side I can't avoid naming names, plus the most outrageous aspect are simply the prices and this can be checked out.
Anyhoo, he bought the CTX400 new and had a number of problems about one year later where tech came out numerous times and eventually started blaming the problem on "bad power". So they got power conditioners and such but still had problems, with seller eventually giving up on it...refused to come out any more.
So, he started having to pay for some things and noticing prices. A simple plug in relay was *$3,000* direct from Siemens !!! Machine apparently had 17 inch special monitor and some bulbs went out in this monitor...I presume for backlighting the screen, but not sure. Anyway, each bulb was $500 !!!! A whole new monitor was.....drum roll...... $13,000 !!!
Oh and the other cute thing, was Siemens was acting like the 810D was "obsolete" just 4 or 5 years after it came out...and wouldn't support it worth a damn.
Anyhoo, this was a jaw dropper to me...so just thought I'd pass it along....it seems one should avoid the Siemens 810D like the HIV virus for starters. OTOH, I've owned some Bridgeport VMC's with Siemens drives and had good luck with them and reasonable repair quotes from them.
Oh and the other thing, this guy eventually found the root cause of his previous problems...a crimped wire that was shorting out and definitely due to manufacturing defect. He took a picture of it, with precise explaination to seller and they accused him of staging the picture and lying about it !!
Keep in mind this is all from a stranger to me, so the whole story should include the manufacturer/distributor side, but at my age and having been around my share of BS, I can read people pretty well and the guy seemed as straight up as they get, get so all sounds plausable to me.
Still, as we haven't heard both sides on the machine side I won't say if tech was from manuf. or distributor. But on the control side I can't avoid naming names, plus the most outrageous aspect are simply the prices and this can be checked out.
Anyhoo, he bought the CTX400 new and had a number of problems about one year later where tech came out numerous times and eventually started blaming the problem on "bad power". So they got power conditioners and such but still had problems, with seller eventually giving up on it...refused to come out any more.
So, he started having to pay for some things and noticing prices. A simple plug in relay was *$3,000* direct from Siemens !!! Machine apparently had 17 inch special monitor and some bulbs went out in this monitor...I presume for backlighting the screen, but not sure. Anyway, each bulb was $500 !!!! A whole new monitor was.....drum roll...... $13,000 !!!
Oh and the other cute thing, was Siemens was acting like the 810D was "obsolete" just 4 or 5 years after it came out...and wouldn't support it worth a damn.
Anyhoo, this was a jaw dropper to me...so just thought I'd pass it along....it seems one should avoid the Siemens 810D like the HIV virus for starters. OTOH, I've owned some Bridgeport VMC's with Siemens drives and had good luck with them and reasonable repair quotes from them.
Oh and the other thing, this guy eventually found the root cause of his previous problems...a crimped wire that was shorting out and definitely due to manufacturing defect. He took a picture of it, with precise explaination to seller and they accused him of staging the picture and lying about it !!