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New Bridge mill

toolmaker96

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jul 9, 2003
Location
Carson City, Nv. USA
We are currently shopping a new, small bridge mill. We are looking at machines with about 80" in x & 50" to 60" in y.
After looking at a lot of companies, we have narrowed it down to three.

1. Kitamura
2. Johnford
3. Vtec

Does anyone have machines from any of these companies? If so I would be interested in hearing your likes/dislikes.
We will be using the machine to manufacture larger injection molds.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
Are you going to be doing High Speed finish machining of cavities and cores or are you just using it for moldbase and roughing work? How much money are you wanting to spend. I have a Mori Seiki NV5000 with a 14000 rpm spindle, 250 ipm feed, 1200 ipm rapid, 30 tool pods, but with only a 40 x 20 travel. Overall a pretty good machine, but if it were my choice I would have bought a larger bed like you want and probrably a 20000 rpm spindle for more versatility but I am not writing the checks. Mori is not cheap, but it is one of the better brands...you get what you pay for...
I would stay away from Johnford just because all the guys I know that have used Johnford told me to stay away from them when we were out machine shopping...
I also hear Daewoo has a decent machine for about the same price as Johnford...
Have fun shopping...
 
Chino, We will be doing both roughing & finishing of lare cavities & cores. We will also be building our bases on the machine. We have several Daewoo C frame machines, and they are terrific. However, we have several customers pushing us to build larger & larger tooling.
We are looking at a big 50 plus, 10k spindle. We are also going with glass scales, and the mold package Fanuc control. We are looking at spending between 350 & 400k.
Our dilima is that the Kitamura is a nicer machine than the Taiwan machines, but is smaller (80" x 45" travel) The cost for the Kitamura vs. the Taiwanese machines is about the same.
If Daewoo built bridge mills, that is most likely who we would go with.
 
I would also stay away from Johnford. We had an Awea and were'nt happy with it. We got a Nicolas Correa fp-30 and are pleased with it. Also have Kit's but no Bridges & they're good machines. There are many other brands you could look into.
 
That is good to know about Johnford. We started out looking at ten or twelve different companies. What we found is that given our specs of a box way machine w/ a 50 taper 10k spindle, we eliminated a number of companies in a hurry. It seems that a lot of machine tool manufactures are afraide of 50 taper spinles of more than 7500 rpm. Due to the max required table weight, box ways are a must.
 
I would also stay away from Johnford. We had an Awea
Isn’t that trial by association? Awea & Johnford aren’t the same company, just Taiwanese. Guy likes his Spanish machine better, but still tarring with the same brush.

TM96. Where Kao-Ming & Hartford on your original 12 list?

Cheers Phil.
 
Yes, Kao ming was on our list. Problem being, they did not offer a 10k spindle on their box way machines.
However, the Kao Ming rep was in yesterday & indicated that they may be able to do a big 50, 10k spidle. If this is the case, we will be taking another close look at them.
As far as machines built in Taiwan go, I am much more comfortable with Kao Ming's support than either Johnford or Vision.
 
I've worked on many Mighty Vipers in aircraft shops.Good machines never had any problems with them.Mitsubishi control.We also had a Nicolas Correa.Nice machine as well.
 
Look at the Cincinnati FTV. With the FTV you get it all, size, reliability, spindle speed, weight, rigidity everything. You dont need box ways on the FTV, they have huge linear reals and with a 3 tonne coloumn, the weight is there on the rails dampening the cut. They do a 8,000 rpm spindle - 50 taper with 46 Kw I beleive. They go from 1200mm up to 5 meters in the x axis,thats 200" and on the Y axis they have 1000 mm (40"). If you could get away with 40 inch Y axis, it might be a better package.
 








 
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