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Hardinge Bridgeport GX1000 osp comparison

cgmaster

Cast Iron
Joined
Jun 9, 2008
Location
Ocean Springs, MS
I have been looking at getting a newer cnc mill. I found a Hardinge GX1000 osp with the Okuma control with only about 1600 hours on it for what seems like a good price. I know these have been out for a while. Does anyone have anything to say about these good or bad?

The other mills I looked at that are comparable are either older Mazak 510c with Fusion and Matrix controls, Kitamura Mycenter 4 and a few other various machines I have looked at. I can get this machine about half the price.

Only reason I am upgrading is I need through spindle coolant.
 
I like the Hardinge GX series mills but would rather have a Fanuc on one like most of the other Hardinge customers. I have a customer with 4 of the exact machines and they have been very reliable. They came out with the GX with OSP about 8 years ago and it didn't sell as expected. Okuma customers were buying the Genos mills instead of the Hardinge for about the same price range and Hardinge customers preferred the Fanuc option. If you are familiar with OSP controls it should be a good choice. I would also ask why it only has 1600 hours, it could be a good thing or could be a very bad thing depending on the reason.

If I ever buy a CNC mill for the shop it will probably be a GX1000. Best of luck, Daryl
 
My only concern would be getting caught in a pissing match between Hardinge & Okuma for something electrical. Besides that though, it's probably a safe bet.

If you have a local Okuma / Hardinge dealer close by that can be there to support you (Gosiger) then you should be in good shape.

Unless you like to old-school it like I do, and program everything G&M code, there's no reason you shouldn't be thrilled with the OSP control. (There's only one thing to my knowledge a Fanuc control will do that an OSP wont...) The OSP are awesome controls.
 
Alot of my programming is cam using HSM works. What is the one thing that Fanuc will do that osp won't?

Lol I have no machine builders or distributors anywhere near me about 6 or 7 hr drive for any of them.

I have found a few older Mazaks, Kitamura but they are alot more and a OKK this looks to be in very good condition but they are all almost double the price and a few years older. The 2 Hardinge gx1000 osp mills I have found they are asking about $30k and $38k the one they came down to $38k has more hours but also has tool setter, workpiece probe, 1000 psi tac and wired for 4th axis. The other one only has the 200psi tac and nothing else.
 
My only concern would be getting caught in a pissing match between Hardinge & Okuma for something electrical. ......

Well, control related anyway. Don't know how the Okuma/Hardinge relationship is. I'd want to be sure to understand what support from Okuma might look like for future control related issues.

Shop I retired from had several CNC pressbrakes that used Okuma servo drives, motors and and motion controls. The U/I was the machine builder's software running on an industrial computer that then sent motion commands to the OSP motion controller. One of the machines lost its parameters in the OSP control. According to the Okuma documentation that came with the machines there was a handheld Okuma operator pendant that one needed to use to reload the data. Okuma America was zero help. The folks I talked to were not even aware of their control being used in a pressbrake when I contacted them to find out how to get one of the handheld units. Took a while, but finally got info from the machine builder on how to use a function within their U/I to set the OSP data and the handheld unit was not required.
 
Alot of my programming is cam using HSM works. What is the one thing that Fanuc will do that osp won't?

Lol I have no machine builders or distributors anywhere near me about 6 or 7 hr drive for any of them.

I have found a few older Mazaks, Kitamura but they are alot more and a OKK this looks to be in very good condition but they are all almost double the price and a few years older. The 2 Hardinge gx1000 osp mills I have found they are asking about $30k and $38k the one they came down to $38k has more hours but also has tool setter, workpiece probe, 1000 psi tac and wired for 4th axis. The other one only has the 200psi tac and nothing else.

I'm kinda interested in the "One" thing the Fanuc can do that the OSP can't do :-)

$30k and $38K seems like a good price/prices.

What is the OKK machine ? , some of those are really excellent. [Fanuc too.].

Like what Otherbrother was saying , reason for sale 1600 hours worth exploring (but not unheard of or too unusual.).

I don't know if Hardinge are still sliding sideways or not ? [In terms of support, applications and even NEW machines. They seem very happy with what they have been able to accomplish in mainland China. lol. ].

[Interestingly seems that Hardinge have switched to using Mits controls for their Bridgeport V series , rather than the serious problems they were having before.] ~ Kinda off topic.

As for what Vancbiker said , not surprised that getting anything directly from Okuma America could prove challenging, (small potatoes)/ not their problem.

In line with what Jashley was saying Gosinger are very good (forward thinking), but not sure what they would charge for what's needed but worth reaching out and making contact; asking what are the likely maintenance issues and rough prices for this and that maybe ? What's it worth to them, presumably they can mark something up even if they are just shipping parts to you ?
 
The Harding's have osp p200m which seems like a really nice control. The closest Hardinge dealer says parts are in stock and applications support. But when your buying everyone seems helpful.

I know Mazak support is good in my area. Kitamura has also been very helpful when needed. I dont have any experience with other manufacturers.

The okk is a 2006 VM5 III 12000 Fanuc 180i-mb
 
I'm kinda interested in the "One" thing the Fanuc can do that the OSP can't do :-)

Single-block edits. On a Fanuc control, if you put the machine in single-block, you can switch to EDIT mode, and jump forward/backward in your program as desired. Switch mack to MEMORY mode, hit cycle start and run the program from there.

It's very useful for someone doing job-shop or repair work. Say you're making a one-off part with a drilled/tapped bolt-circle. You break a tap in one hole and thus, must hit reset. You can put the machine in single-block, restart at/after the tool-change, turn the spindle on, activate tool-offsets and bring the tool down to the "initial plane" in Z. Then, switch to edit mode, select the 'next hole' after the broken tap, back to Memory, hit CYCLE START and the machine will position to the 'next' hole. Go back to EDIT, scroll up to the G84 line, back to MEMORY, hit CYCLE START and the machine will then tap the hole. Back to EDIT, cursor down to the rest of the holes, back to MEMORY, CYCLE START and the machine will finish the bolt-circle.

It's risky, but very effective when you're working in one-off parts.

Also, it doesn't work if G41/G42 is activated, as the control will be reading ahead. Once the look-ahead lines are executed it will skip back to the line you manually selected, and thus CRASH-O-MATIC.




The only other control besides Fanuc that I've seen do this is Dynapath. I've never seen any others - at least I don't know of any others that will let you do single-block edits...
 
Single-block edits. On a Fanuc control, if you put the machine in single-block, you can switch to EDIT mode, and jump forward/backward in your program as desired. Switch mack to MEMORY mode, hit cycle start and run the program from there.

It's very useful for someone doing job-shop or repair work. Say you're making a one-off part with a drilled/tapped bolt-circle. You break a tap in one hole and thus, must hit reset. You can put the machine in single-block, restart at/after the tool-change, turn the spindle on, activate tool-offsets and bring the tool down to the "initial plane" in Z. Then, switch to edit mode, select the 'next hole' after the broken tap, back to Memory, hit CYCLE START and the machine will position to the 'next' hole. Go back to EDIT, scroll up to the G84 line, back to MEMORY, hit CYCLE START and the machine will then tap the hole. Back to EDIT, cursor down to the rest of the holes, back to MEMORY, CYCLE START and the machine will finish the bolt-circle.

It's risky, but very effective when you're working in one-off parts.

Also, it doesn't work if G41/G42 is activated, as the control will be reading ahead. Once the look-ahead lines are executed it will skip back to the line you manually selected, and thus CRASH-O-MATIC.




The only other control besides Fanuc that I've seen do this is Dynapath. I've never seen any others - at least I don't know of any others that will let you do single-block edits...

Wow that seems like a lot of work. I would just delete that hole position from the program! If you are doing one-offs I would think you are re-posting from Cam (assuming you are using cam) anyways for the next run so don't need to save the program... but agree in principal is a nice feature.
 
Wow that seems like a lot of work. I would just delete that hole position from the program! If you are doing one-offs I would think you are re-posting from Cam (assuming you are using cam) anyways for the next run so don't need to save the program... but agree in principal is a nice feature.

One of those things that looks worse when typed out. Not much work, and very handy on the floor. Can be used weather you have a CAM'd program or old-school.
 








 
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