Small job / repair shop here. Been standing on my own for around 6 months.. things are going good the usual (?) growing pains minus finding work. Im talking the growing pains of buying a bunch of old machines... and praying they hold up to help pay for their replacement.. That plan has been going well until today.
Realized that both of my vertical mills are to the point where they either need a full rebuild (bridgeport & beaver mills) or they need replaced.
Ideally i would like a mill with a Cat 40 spindle... possibly a conversational / cnc control. Before jumping to my own shop i worked as the programmer/ set up guy for the biggest shop in the area so the learning curve doesn't really apply here.. However does anyone have any ideas on what a GOOD brand mill is these days when it comes to manual brands, or even the conversational.
About a year before I left my last job they had purchased a ProtoTrak mill... that was close to what i want but i felt that it was lacking in alot of ways, not being able to threadmill, or interpolate and ramp the z axis via the conversational control, and not having any table locks for when running on the manual mode were a real turn off. Otherwise the machine seemed solid enough built.
Realized that both of my vertical mills are to the point where they either need a full rebuild (bridgeport & beaver mills) or they need replaced.
Ideally i would like a mill with a Cat 40 spindle... possibly a conversational / cnc control. Before jumping to my own shop i worked as the programmer/ set up guy for the biggest shop in the area so the learning curve doesn't really apply here.. However does anyone have any ideas on what a GOOD brand mill is these days when it comes to manual brands, or even the conversational.
About a year before I left my last job they had purchased a ProtoTrak mill... that was close to what i want but i felt that it was lacking in alot of ways, not being able to threadmill, or interpolate and ramp the z axis via the conversational control, and not having any table locks for when running on the manual mode were a real turn off. Otherwise the machine seemed solid enough built.
