Advice on buying used CNC lathe

Hi

I want to buy a used CNC lathe for home/hobby use.
Considering the cost, it probably will be a smaller machine made in the 1990s.
Any advice on what manufacturer/model to look for, or to avoid, regarding availability of parts, service and manuals?
What type of control would you recommend or not recommend?
Are there any specific problems with specific manufactures.
Like: On machines from manufacturer 'A' you might find a problem with the spindle bearing.
or, manufacturer 'B' has a higher failure rate on tool changers.

This will be my first CNC machine and I am a total novice.
So, all and any advice is highly appreciated.

Thanks
Tom

1960mog said:

Hi

I want to buy a used CNC lathe for home/hobby use.
Considering the cost, it probably will be a smaller machine made in the 1990s.
Any advice on what manufacturer/model to look for, or to avoid, regarding availability of parts, service and manuals?
What type of control would you recommend or not recommend?
Are there any specific problems with specific manufactures.
Like: On machines from manufacturer 'A' you might find a problem with the spindle bearing.
or, manufacturer 'B' has a higher failure rate on tool changers.

This will be my first CNC machine and I am a total novice.
So, all and any advice is highly appreciated.

Thanks
Tom

Click to expand...

Just be aware - CNC years are like dog years.

Regards Tyrone.

It's a lot like anything else. There are a lot of beaters and junk, and there are the jewels that you have to be ready to pounce on when they come around.

My general rule is to stay away from "orphans" - machines/controllers that no longer have a builder behind them. When it comes to the iron, any of the well known names are probably ok for what you're doing, but stay away from "orphans" like P&W, Cincinnati-Milacron, etc as it's difficult and EXPENSIVE to get parts/support/service. These were good brands in their day, but corporate failures have lead to a real hardship for those that still own them. For controls, again, stay away from things like Acramatic, Team-Mate, Yasnac, Allen-Bradley, as they're no longer supported and boards/parts are expensive, and many times, impossible, to find.

Keep browsing though the used machine sites, dealers, and ebay, and eventually, a winner will show up. Be ready with immediate cash, because - just like that low miles vintage or classic car, it's going to disappear FAST.

Big names are better with parts/support. I work for Doosan, and we have parts for Doosan/Daewoo machines going back to the 1st in '79. Same with the Fanuc and Mitsubishi controllers. Okuma, Mori, Mazak, Makino and the like all do the same.

-Doug

1960mog said:

Hi

I want to buy a used CNC lathe for home/hobby use.
Considering the cost, it probably will be a smaller machine made in the 1990s.
Any advice on what manufacturer/model to look for, or to avoid, regarding availability of parts, service and manuals?
What type of control would you recommend or not recommend?
Are there any specific problems with specific manufactures.
Like: On machines from manufacturer 'A' you might find a problem with the spindle bearing.
or, manufacturer 'B' has a higher failure rate on tool changers.

This will be my first CNC machine and I am a total novice.
So, all and any advice is highly appreciated.

Thanks
Tom

Click to expand...

get a lathe with a controller that can be serviced, my prefernce would be Fanuc, may not be cheap to fix, but service and parts are availible. Look for a Mori-Sieki with a Fanuc control

i'd avoid cincinnati lathes with bird names...talon,hawk,falcon... i've seen too many lemons.

also, i wouldn't want a windows based control. the siemens/vickers 2100 is prone to problems. unless you're running
monster sized programs , or insist on having a CAM system at the machine , or need to watch gay porn while the machine
is running ...i can't see any advantage to running windows nt/2000- over a dirt-simple ascii text based 286 running g-code
when most programs are less than 10k in size. Haas ruined a really great simple control with their NGC . i'd take
a stable simple control over a bloated multitasking computer with WIFI and bluetooth that crashes and locks up .

Thank you guys

This is the advice I was looking for.
Specific manufactures for machines and controllers.

So far we have :
Doosan
Mori Seiki
Mazak
Okuma
Macino

for machines and:
Fanuc

for controllers

Would anybody like to add to this list?

Most used machines are sold by used machine dealers.
They just jack up the price.
Is there any web side that lists machine for sale by owner?

Thanks
Tom

My preference. mid to late 90's mazak with a T32 or T+...

Plenty of support, they made a metric buttload of them. Parts are available, but
they hardly ever break. And they are pretty cheap at this point.

And MAZATROL.. No need for fancy CAM, or the steep learning curve of hand coding
a lathe program. Though some simple CAD for quick drawings and pulling points
never hurts. I've had people with no manufacturing background, little computer
skills and didn't even graduate high school programming and running parts with
just a few hours of instruction.

Bobw said:

My preference. mid to late 90's mazak with a T32 or T+...

Plenty of support, they made a metric buttload of them. Parts are available, but
they hardly ever break. And they are pretty cheap at this point.

And MAZATROL.. No need for fancy CAM, or the steep learning curve of hand coding
a lathe program. Though some simple CAD for quick drawings and pulling points
never hurts. I've had people with no manufacturing background, little computer
skills and didn't even graduate high school programming and running parts with
just a few hours of instruction.

Click to expand...

With Mazatrol, less than two hours instruction and you'll be able to program nearly anything you can sketch out.
Faster than doing the sketch too.

At the risk of hijacking, but I think it fits with the OP's question - when looking for used manual machines, it's all (or at least mostly) about the wear. With used CNC, is wear a major issue, or is it all (or mostly) about the electronics/controls?

1960mog said:

Fanuc

for controllers

Click to expand...

As you're completely new to this I'll give a quick run down of pros and cons of Fanuc controls.

Fanuc are:

Top of the heap for getting parts for older controls
Above average in terms of reliability
Middle of the road performance wise
Below average on features, unless you pay for each and every one of them
Bottom of the barrel for intuitiveness and user friendliness. There are worse, but not many.

awake said:

At the risk of hijacking, but I think it fits with the OP's question - when looking for used manual machines, it's all (or at least mostly) about the wear. With used CNC, is wear a major issue, or is it all (or mostly) about the electronics/controls?

Click to expand...

mechanical wear is important. But more important is parts and support.. Or should I say AFFORDABLE parts and support.

If you get a great deal on a VMC with no wear for $3k, that's awesome until you have a hiccup and can't get a driver
board because nobody has them and nobody knows how to fix them and you're stuck with a $3k boat anchor.. Or even
worse, you can get one, but it costs twice what you paid for the entire machine.

I have a similar interest to the OP, I would like to find a good CNC lathe that I would enjoy using. I have a 1984 CNC mill, a Deckel FP2NC. By modern standards it is extremely primitive - it has no tool changer, only 16k of memory, but I program it in G-code and it has some very powerful G-code commands that make it possible to write very short programs. It has a great community of users here on PM and there is a lot of support available to keep it running. So I would like to find a CNC lathe that would be a good match, with a similar level of support and community of users.

A stock feeder would be nice to have, as would a tool changer. a 12x20 work envelope would be adequate.

1960mog said:

Thank you guys

This is the advice I was looking for.
Specific manufactures for machines and controllers.

So far we have :
Doosan
Mori Seiki
Mazak
Okuma
Macino

for machines and:
Fanuc

for controllers

Would anybody like to add to this list?

Most used machines are sold by used machine dealers.
They just jack up the price.
Is there any web side that lists machine for sale by owner?

Thanks
Tom

Click to expand...

Many times, new machinery distributors have leads on excellent used machines but can't find a used buyer that easy. Develop a relationship with a new machine distributor and you'll find quality machines that don't have the dealer markup.