The Dude
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2010
- Location
- Portland, OR
A customer of mine has two Thermwood CNC routers (3-axis). The controllers are very outdated and need to be replaced. They gave a quote of about $36K (both machines) which would include controls, cabinet, install but the motors wouldn't be changed out. Local Centroid dealer gave a ballpark of about $32K which would included everything that Thermwood quoted plus engineering and it would replace the servo motors (not sure of brand). Plus the Centroid dealer would do it in a shorter leadtime (2-3 weeks vs. 6-7 weeks).
A few questions:
1. How good is support from Centroid (phone, email)? I looked at other threads and it seems like the older ones (before 2010) weren't good on their support, newer ones seemed to be.
2. How good is local tech service in the Pacific NW? My customer is in the Portland, OR area. I know there is a guy (independent as I understand) in Northern WA but he is also quite busy (we had Centroids at my last place of employment and he was good but not very responsive) that does tech service but is there anyone else available in the Portland area? I am going to talk to the dealer some more (I'm helping them make a decision on this) to find out their service abilities but the guy was out of town today.
3. In general, how is the reliability of Centroid compared to other controllers?
4. One post that I saw implied that Centroids didn't work well for "production" work, which I don't fully get. I know that CNC can be (or is sometimes required) for prototypes and low volume but what would make them not work so well for repeat work? This customer does mostly "fixed nest" parts (i.e. the same part nested for the highest material utilization, typically manually).
Thanks for any input,
The Dude
A few questions:
1. How good is support from Centroid (phone, email)? I looked at other threads and it seems like the older ones (before 2010) weren't good on their support, newer ones seemed to be.
2. How good is local tech service in the Pacific NW? My customer is in the Portland, OR area. I know there is a guy (independent as I understand) in Northern WA but he is also quite busy (we had Centroids at my last place of employment and he was good but not very responsive) that does tech service but is there anyone else available in the Portland area? I am going to talk to the dealer some more (I'm helping them make a decision on this) to find out their service abilities but the guy was out of town today.
3. In general, how is the reliability of Centroid compared to other controllers?
4. One post that I saw implied that Centroids didn't work well for "production" work, which I don't fully get. I know that CNC can be (or is sometimes required) for prototypes and low volume but what would make them not work so well for repeat work? This customer does mostly "fixed nest" parts (i.e. the same part nested for the highest material utilization, typically manually).
Thanks for any input,
The Dude
