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Choosing between Tsugami B0206 vs Citizen A20 3F7 vs Star SR20 type G. Help!

eopin

Plastic
Joined
Oct 24, 2019
Hello,

My company is in the process of purchasing our first CNC Swiss Screw machine. Of the three options available here between the machines mentioned above, I am unable to decide the best option.

One of the differentiating factors between these companies is after sales & service, which are pretty much good around here from my market study.

However, I am unable to select amongst the three for machining of varied materials such as Brass, Bronze, SS, Titanium.

From a cost pov, Tsugamis are the most affordable ones and Citizens are the most expensive ones.

Anyone having experience with these machines can help me out to select the best option based on a performance point of view? That would be immensely helpful.


Thanks!
 
After sales and service from Star is pretty bad in this country depending on what regional office you deal with. The New York office is the one I am forced to use because of my current location. Decades ago I had to use the California office. Ordering parts from them is a pain in the butt. No need to go into details about that. Onsite service and phone tech support is the luck of the draw, usually the good phone support people are always busy helping their onsite techs over a cell phone.

On the other hand even while I have no first hand experience Citizen gets nothing but praise on this forum.
 
I have a Tsugami B0205...very similar to the one you are considering, but the 206 has a Y2 axis. Overall I have been very happy with the machine but that is not to say it is perfect. Feel free to ask any specific questions about my experience but I agree with what you said about after the sale support being most important. Being in Chicago I do not think my experience with Tsugami support would be relevant, but it has been generally positive. I do not have any experience with Star or Citizen so I cannot compare them, but overall I have heard mixed reviews on Star, nothing but praise for Citizen, and very little either way on Tsugami.

Good luck! Again, feel free to ask any specifics on the Tsugami, even if only to corroborate someone else's opinion.
 
Being in Chicago I do not think my experience with Tsugami support would be relevant, but it has been generally positive.

Of Star's 4 USA locations from memory I think the Illinois location which is close to Chicago is the only one that has gotten any respectable reviews for sales and service. I don't know what it is about Chicago and the surrounding areas, but it seems a lot of manufacturing businesses that have multiple locations put headquarters there and or staff their best people at a location in that area.

Anytime I have ripped on Star parts and service support in here I rarely have had someone post a story in defense of them. In fact soon I will have to order a set of precision bearing from them soon, and I am dreading the experience. That is one of the few parts they sell at a reasonable price.

Most of the items you can buy elsewhere they sell for a 10-15x markup, like $10 encoder belts for $150 if you want to spend the time matching them up as the off the shelf parts they use are unmarked. The issue is buying from them is a process, you don't just pick up the phone and give them a part number, shipping address and credit card.
 
I setup, program, run, troubleshoot, and otherwise maintain a LOT of Citizens every day. We used to have Stars too, got rid of 'em. They weren't bad machines, but we couldn't get support at all, so away they went.

For ease of operator setup, nothing compares to Citizen. Every common function (touching off tools, offsets, cutoffs, barfeed operation (if you have a CAV barfeed with it), etc) is easy to use, intuitive, usually clearly labeled, and often has a picture on the control of what will happen when you press that button.

For programming, they're simpler than the Stars, IMHO, but I never wrote code for the Stars, that was when I was just an operator, but having read past programs, the Citizens are cleaner, again, just my opinion.

Maintenance wise, I'm told the Stars were more rugged in the event of a crash, but since avoiding crashing is something we all strive for, I don't put too much weight on that. Our Citizens are very reliable, and repeatable.

The ability to use the handwheel to jog through a program, even going backwards when you need to, is a great feature that the Stars didn't have, and the Tsugami may or may not have, no experience there. It makes tricky setups way less scary.

Live tooling accessories and adapters for Citizen are versatile and numerous. Wanna hob a gear? Sure, there's an attachment, and a built in G code for that. Wanna do polygonal turning? Also an attachment and a G code. Want two forward and two rear facing live tools instead of a radial live tool? Sure, you can get that. They're not cheap, but they're good. I recommend you take a look at Command Tooling, no matter which machine you buy, they have an extensive range of live tools for all the brands, and quality is on par with OEM, while pricing is usually a bit lower.

I'm a Citizen fanboy, for sure. If you have specific questions about Citizens, I'm happy to answer them.
 
And one more query regarding LFV technology:
I wanted to know whether LFV technology in Citizen machines is
a) Software based feature
or
b) whether the machine tool manufacturers have made structural changes in the moving elements related to the concerned feature.

I ask this because not many companies in India are using this feature and hence even the dealers are not very sure about this.
 
LFV is both software and hardware. It's basically a built in implementation of TriboMAM technology, as pioneered by M4 Sciences.

Without getting into specifics, I can tell you that if you take the time to dial it in, it works very well for turning and gun drilling.
 
I have a Tsugami B0205...very similar to the one you are considering, but the 206 has a Y2 axis. Overall I have been very happy with the machine but that is not to say it is perfect. Feel free to ask any specific questions about my experience but I agree with what you said about after the sale support is most important. Being in Chicago I do not think my experience with Tsugami support would be relevant, but it has been generally positive. I do not have any experience with Star or Citizen so I cannot compare them, but overall I have heard mixed reviews on Star, nothing but praise for Citizen, and very little either way on Tsugami.

Good luck! Again, feel free to ask any specifics on the Tsugami, even if only to corroborate someone else's opinion.


I am considering S206 in Tsugami against A20 in Citizen because we have got mixed reviews about B0206 with SS300 series material for long-run production (>10000 pcs continuous) around here.
I am trying to get more information on Tsugami's 'Oscillation Cutting' feature to eliminate bird nesting issues. Tsugami's local guys told us that their offering of the high-pressure pump of 1500 W should aid in chip removal. We are not sure about that.
Have you faced issues with chip building in your machine for specific materials when left unsupervised? If yes, have you tried out the Oscillation Cutting feature?
 
I am considering S206 in Tsugami against A20 in Citizen because we have got mixed reviews about B0206 with SS300 series material for long-run production (>10000 pcs continuous) around here.
I am trying to get more information on Tsugami's 'Oscillation Cutting' feature to eliminate bird nesting issues. Tsugami's local guys told us that their offering of the high-pressure pump of 1500 W should aid in chip removal. We are not sure about that.
Have you faced issues with chip building in your machine for specific materials when left unsupervised? If yes, have you tried out the Oscillation Cutting feature?

hmmm, I'm not sure what benefit the S206 would have over the B0206 on specific materials...I thought the only difference was tooling-zone configuration. Unless you're saying the tooling zone in the S is better for stringy-chip-producing materials?

Unfortunately I do not have the Oscillating Cutting feature on either of our Tsugamis. We work exclusively on carbon and alloy steel and put a fair amount of effort into chip control as I am no fan of birds nests. We have been able to keep all of our chips under control via:

1. When drilling we'll reduce the peck until the birds nest goes away...usually around .030"...most of our drills are in the .125" - .250" range.
2. For turning/grooving ops that tend to tangle up we will put those tools on the far side of the cross slide and mount the tools upside down so the chips can fall down more easily.
3. Aiming flood coolant to strip the tangles off.

I believe the oscillating cutting feature would work well. That being said, I remember seeing that feature at IMTS 3 years ago at the Citizen booth and I do believe the Citizen tooling slide is above the guide bushing and parallel to the ground (so the inserts would point down towards the ground) which I think aids chip control in that it allows the chips to fall down freely. The Tsugami's DO have the hand wheel program check feature which, like TeachMe said, is invaluable when proving out new programs and even just setting up jobs.

Do Citizens come with programing software? I have been happy with the Abile software that comes with the Tsugami. It is not perfect but does a very good job. Also, the Machine Metrics monitoring software is pretty handy but it's really just that....machine monitoring software.

If you can share an example of a part (even if just a sketch) I can tell you what my confidence level would be running it unattended (and if it were to be made out of alloy steel....because I have no experience with SS!)
 
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