aarongough
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2014
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
Hey guys!
Seems Wrustle's threads have been giving up the goods far too quickly of late, so I figured I'd pick up the slack
I've been keeping an eye out over the last few months for used VMCs, have seen a few HAAS & Fadal machines that were tempting but priced too high (Canada pricing!), then the other day I was lamenting the situation with my girlfriend while absentmindedly checking Kijiji on my phone... Glanced down and nearly had a heart attack...
The machine looked pretty clean, no chip scour, no overt signs of rust, so I email the seller asking if it's still available and cross my fingers till they're blue!
Then I look at the ad again and notice a critical detail I'd missed:
"2 identical machines for sale"
I start chatting with the seller, he seems like a nice guy, runs a tool and die shop with about a dozen verticals a few hours from where I live. The Fadals are the oldest machines in his fleet and he's looking to move them on. Says they still run fine, can still take a cut (drawbars are somewhat intact then!), and are in fairly clean condition. Both are VMC15RTs, 21 station tool changers.
Only hitch is he has someone interested already but who is being slow with deposit, so he tells me it's first past the post as far as he's concerned.
I do my due diligence to make sure he seems legit (email, name and phone number match a real business, has been in operation a while, using the email address listed on his company website) and then send him a deposit! Machines are mine pending inspection! Hooray!
I'm excited about this as these machines are mechanically identical to my current Fadal VMC10, which means the spare parts I've accumulated will be interchangeable, and it has been a goal of mine for a while to setup a shop with a number of identical machines to simplify programming and maintenance, so now I'm off to a good start!
Now for "the Wrustling": small as these machines are they are still too large to fit into my current shop (only 500sq ft). The seller has agreed to store them indoors at his facility until at least the end of the year, so now I'm hunting for new shops instead of new machines! (I'll really get to drag this thread out lol!)
Tomorrow I'm driving down to inspect the machines, but I pretty much expect to finalize the purchase as long as they're running. For $4k each I can fully rebuild each of them (if even necessary) and still end up with 2 machines for less than $12k each, so no concerns there. I threw together an inspection kit today so I can work out what will need replacing and get a head start on buying parts:
Thanks to you guys I know these machines inside and out so it will be nice to apply that knowledge to these machines and bring in new capability! My current single machine is a bottleneck because I can't run production and do R&D work at the same time, so these enclosed machines will be the ones running production and my VMC10 will be the machine for prototyping and making tooling and so on, which will be awesome!
I will post further pics and an update tomorrow after I've inspected the machines. Here's hoping they actually exist and I didn't just get reamed for the deposit!
Weird to start a thread regarding machines I haven't even seen yet I know, but I feel like a kid on the night before christmas right now!
-Aaron
Seems Wrustle's threads have been giving up the goods far too quickly of late, so I figured I'd pick up the slack
I've been keeping an eye out over the last few months for used VMCs, have seen a few HAAS & Fadal machines that were tempting but priced too high (Canada pricing!), then the other day I was lamenting the situation with my girlfriend while absentmindedly checking Kijiji on my phone... Glanced down and nearly had a heart attack...
The machine looked pretty clean, no chip scour, no overt signs of rust, so I email the seller asking if it's still available and cross my fingers till they're blue!
Then I look at the ad again and notice a critical detail I'd missed:
"2 identical machines for sale"
I start chatting with the seller, he seems like a nice guy, runs a tool and die shop with about a dozen verticals a few hours from where I live. The Fadals are the oldest machines in his fleet and he's looking to move them on. Says they still run fine, can still take a cut (drawbars are somewhat intact then!), and are in fairly clean condition. Both are VMC15RTs, 21 station tool changers.
Only hitch is he has someone interested already but who is being slow with deposit, so he tells me it's first past the post as far as he's concerned.
I do my due diligence to make sure he seems legit (email, name and phone number match a real business, has been in operation a while, using the email address listed on his company website) and then send him a deposit! Machines are mine pending inspection! Hooray!
I'm excited about this as these machines are mechanically identical to my current Fadal VMC10, which means the spare parts I've accumulated will be interchangeable, and it has been a goal of mine for a while to setup a shop with a number of identical machines to simplify programming and maintenance, so now I'm off to a good start!
Now for "the Wrustling": small as these machines are they are still too large to fit into my current shop (only 500sq ft). The seller has agreed to store them indoors at his facility until at least the end of the year, so now I'm hunting for new shops instead of new machines! (I'll really get to drag this thread out lol!)
Tomorrow I'm driving down to inspect the machines, but I pretty much expect to finalize the purchase as long as they're running. For $4k each I can fully rebuild each of them (if even necessary) and still end up with 2 machines for less than $12k each, so no concerns there. I threw together an inspection kit today so I can work out what will need replacing and get a head start on buying parts:
Thanks to you guys I know these machines inside and out so it will be nice to apply that knowledge to these machines and bring in new capability! My current single machine is a bottleneck because I can't run production and do R&D work at the same time, so these enclosed machines will be the ones running production and my VMC10 will be the machine for prototyping and making tooling and so on, which will be awesome!
I will post further pics and an update tomorrow after I've inspected the machines. Here's hoping they actually exist and I didn't just get reamed for the deposit!
Weird to start a thread regarding machines I haven't even seen yet I know, but I feel like a kid on the night before christmas right now!
-Aaron