Fives is not corporate raiders tho. A friend with a $$$ Landis is very happy with Fives. Great service, decent prices. Let's hope the worst of it is behind them.
They are still using the poorly thought out, corner cutting designs from the Corporate Raider era though, Which is the crux of the problem.
I am not trying to argue, but have you ever compared the capabilities of one of these machines side by side with any of the others in a similar envelope/size from other makers and compared long term maintenance costs of those brands. Maybe I have a jilted perspective.
Let alone all the pattern failures that go un revised (mind you I service these still, so I have to deal with this crap often)
Now I also do work on numerous other machine makers in this size range, other than the el cheapos from Korea (Hyundai Wia, HNK, Johnford) I can say with a degree of certainty GL is not something I'd suggest if you are buying a 3m to 5m VTL or table or floor type.borer. unless you want to pay guys like me through the nose more often than you should have to. If that is a cost you can absorb, we are more than happy to take the work. There is a reason you don't see many of the heavy engineering job shops buy these as opposed to the other offerings, those guys have the ROI figured and run tight ships, and in those places it's all Japanese or Eastern European, because they dont die and have minimal issues in the long term, and can be run like they want to make money day in and out.
Landis I cant speak on they may be fine build/design wise.
Now I will with all that negativity follow it with some positives: Fives has made alot of steps in the right direction, they have from what I hear have found a way to integrate the best aspects of the GL8000 control to the more common Fanuc (Z/W tracking is a godsend) and there have been some minor improvements to rigidity and higher quality castings, and addressing some of the pattern failures on certain models that were problematic. So their ownership is a net positive, they just have alot more work to do IMO on that front, to properly right the ship.