'Toyoda supports Toyota in Japan. Different companies but under the same umbrella.
Go FMS, completely expandable to fit your capacity needs. The machines are up to 500 tool capacity in the matrix mags, which basically is the entire length of the machine. You can plug in a machine to the RGV System and expand the pallets as needed. Have your sales guy get you into the Atlas Groups Vitron Mfg. campus up on Union Hills, They still are running the second 4 machine cell I setup back in 98'- 99', and that program was running 600+ hours a month for each machine, 4 machines and 22 pallets in the system. There use to be another cell at Morris Mfg down in Chandler as well. I know of another system out here in Ca. that is a 10 machine cell and they have been running it for the last 20 years.
A few years back there service dept went thru some big changes and I believe they are much more inline with what is expected out of a machine tool builder. Phycho's install was in the middle of those changes unfortunately.
There may still be a service guy living in Scottsdale, if he hasn't retired, and there was another coming out of Colorado during my time. Both guys are solid veterans of the company and resolved all of my issues that I couldn't tackle myself. The engineering group is top notch. I also know of a couple local independent guys that will be able to take care of your service and they are well versed in the brand. They use to do our PM work, when Methods West got shook up they went out on there own, again both solid guys.
Toyods FMS control is far superior to any of the other brands in the market place when it come to flexibility of process. They started out with this in mind when they developed the FMS System software where as others have been a copy cat with some of the key details missing or not working to there full potential. I evaluated them all back in 2008 and not one of the other brands came close to the flexibility the Toyoda had, not even Makino at that time.
Matsuura would be my next choice. They have the closest cell controller to the Toyoda that I know of and there horiz machines are top notch. You will be able to view both if your guy can get you into the Vitron campus.
Just so your aware I'm not affiliated with Toyoda or Matsuura on any level, just been doing the FMS thing since the mid 90's, and I would be happy to answer any detail questions you have from a user side. Just send me a PM with an email addy, as my new gig is going to consume me and I won't get back to PM often enough to follow this thread.
Good luck with your decision, your local Toyoda sales guy should be Mike Goodger and he will bend over backwards to make sure you are takin care of.
Off to Westec tomorrow, should be some nice toys there to ogle over.
