Have your say about this chinese cnc milling machine

[Clive S]

What happened? Did you buy it? How did it perform??

I guess you had read this thread?
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/uncate...ach-posts.html

That's spooky I have read this thread 4 or 5 times and also contacted the company Fred Lee

[Desertboy]

Just read that thread on cnczone my friend is after a VMC and it really makes you think about importing a new one vs a 2nd hand one they do seem very good value for the price.

Sad the guy who ran the thread hasn't got it working yet

[the_wildgoose]

OK, so I'm going to hijack this thread now...

So I had been eyeing up the same chinese mill, and not withstanding that "it ain't been seen running" (which I think is a fixable problem), it does seem like a lot of iron for the price. So my question is:
- There are a couple of Hurco VSX24 machines on auction sites at the moment (2001 era machines), for similar money
- I am a complete novice in this area
- What hidden costs/benefits are there from buying classical big name CNC machine?
- When it goes wrong, what kind of costs am I going to have on these old machines (assume I don't have another one to make parts for the first one...)
- Use is hobby/light-production (I can outsource my parts if I needed to, eg it broke, but nice to be able to do them in-house).
- Are these old machines going to be useable from day 1 or will I be hunting down manuals and learning to use the interface (only experience up to now is Mach3)

The main "vs" would be buying one of these nice looking chinese mills with a view to getting them working with LinuxCNC

Thanks for your thoughts/wake-up calls...

[Boyan Silyavski]

There was a guy in some forum / may be Practical machinist/ that explained very well when deciding on a machine and its price.

Simply said you should really need it. Then a good machine will have 10 years x 24h non stop life. So even if not the case here, price has to be divided on 520 weeks so you see what it will cost you per week to own it/ or day or month, etc../ Then Calculate how much will cost you any downtime, missed job, etc. Then see whats the week cost of ownership of a crappy machine and a good machine and how down time goes into that calculation...

So that said, the Chinese machines for me always would be an unknown with a potential of a disaster. Remember the " large router thread" i started where it turned that the large Chinese routers have a crap bed?

Old brand machines if in not working state should be very cheap, or if in working, that state must be demonstrated. or you will find how much a brand company charges for a mother board, computer or similar. But mechanically my bet will be on a brand machine. Later in worse case scenario retrofit with Chinese offline controller 600-1500 euro.

[Schematicsman]

Hi there Boyan.
I just want to know if the PMDX controller is good for mycnc6040 with standard motors and or the Nema 23 Bipolar (Holding Torque 3Nm) (425oz.in) 4.2A 57x57x114mm 4 Wires better for it with the PMDX to move fast and do I need a switching psu of 36v~40vdc for the Nema 23 or can I use the same 24v dc that is in the blackbox already?

[masinecc]

No, i havent buy it.