there is someone that was trying to resell a twin pallet brothers on her about a year ago at a "HUGE" loose... I think Brothers have there place in making parts but there not as universal as a cat40 machine.. I am in the market this week for a new mill and the DM2 is at the top of the list .. there on sale this week with a auger for $53,995 ...
I looked at up grading to a 15K spindle but after looking at the cycle times on the programs I run every month most of then only have one or two tools I run at 12k now and when I ran the numbers on them I would really not be saving a lot ...
one needs to look at the numbers and how they really play out on a VMC ,,, a VMC in a production job is doing good to have a spindle on time of 33% ... so meaning the spindle is on 20 min out of a hour ... when I ran the numbers on my programs it looked like at best I could speed them up by 10% going from 10k to 15k on the spindle ,,, most of the time was still spent changing tools or running at slower speeds on finish cuts or using tool that could not be ran that fast .. so I would save 2 min a hour is all... for the cost of going from 10k to 15k being $10,295 or 20% more for the machine the numbers just do not work for my application.
why spend 20% more to save 2% of my time?
If I want more parts per hour I put a new mill in the shop ... when I went from one mill to two mills my production went up by 300% over night ,,, at all times one machine was running even if I was doing a setup on the second machine ... when I went from 2 to 3 mills my production still doubled by keeping two mills running at all and a lot of the time all three mills at a time.
This might sound funny but a machine is "SUPER" cheap to own ,,, If I buy a new DT2 this week I well be into it about 60K by the time its on my floor ,,,,,, but I well save 21K on my taxes this year .. so the DT2 well cost me $39k this year ...... in lets say 10 years I can still sell the machine for 30K ... so for under a thousand bucks a year I can use a DM2
I changed from Fadals to Haas mills about 6 years ago and have had vary good luck with them aside from the early NGC "POS" they sent me ,, Under warranty I have had them change out some burned out LED lights and one Auger motor. never had to pay for a single service call that was not my screw up ..
There not the fastest or more ridged machine I have ever worked on but being a shop owner there hands down the best ROI i have seen by a long shot