I bought one of the 3016s from Fred. I love it. It's exactly what I needed. It's hard to beat for a garage machine or someone that needs to hit the ground running making parts and doesn't want a sizable monthly payment. While I do think there are benefits to a brand new machine and if ran a business making specific products and already had a solid customer base, I would probably buy new, but I also live in Southern California and go into businesses all day for my job. I can honestly say, probably 80% of machine shops or shops that manufacture have at least one Fadal, if not multiples. There are plenty of shops I go into that just have them cranking out parts.
I think they are fantastic machines for the money. If you just want something that relatively easy to use, makes good parts and can be serviced, they are hard to beat. I bought the machine, three 17.5 Orange vises, a bunch of Maritool holders and some other stuff and still spent the same or less than what a loaded out Tormach costs. I started with a full size machine and skipped the bench top/Tormach all together and I'm glad I did. My only regret is not buying the Fadal first.
I try to learn on the daily, but I've never worked in a machine shop. I'm entirely self-taught. I have made a few friends over the years that are machinists and help me with oddball questions, along with reading on here, videos or anything else I can get information from. Some works, some doesn't, but it's no different than any other field.
Yes, they fit in a standard garage door and yes, it will run on a RPC. It's a little extra cost for power/phase conversion/moving, but I think it's definitely worth it.
Creampuff was too hard to pass up on the for sale pic alone. Working out the deal with Fred and his other coworkers made it as easy as it could possibly be.
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