I Considered Tormach

[Snapper]

Tormach are less than half the weight of any VMC with similar envelope, if that doesn't ring alarm bells with you then you need to do some reading or gain some machining experience.

Further, the fact that their chassis are fairly cheaply converted manual milling machines on welded stands should give further cause for serious concern.

Finally, reading the dedicated forums clearly shows that what you are predominantly buying is a project and not a finished machine and support is primarily user-to-user and rarely from the manufacturer/assembler/dissembler (strive to understand that English before commenting) you should be very wary indeed whatever your use might be for a machine which may be delivered with more slack than your average Coal Merchant's lorry! :D

They're probably fine for making your average toy choo-choo but I'm not counting that as Engineering with a capital "E" :D

I don’t think there is such a thing as a VMC with similar envelope? There are the XYZ 500/560’s that you could count. Haas have their mini mill which isn’t generally considered to be a VMC, and on a welded steel base also. I don’t think having a big heavy cast iron base really offers a great deal at this end of the spectrum unless you plan on zipping half a ton around at rapid feed.

But these are industrial machines for an industrial environment, designed to run two shifts and spit parts out to meet deadlines. Again, I don’t know what your usage is, for Engineering with a capital E (I read that as making a business out of it?) then fair enough as I said in my first post, I have made a bit of an assumption given your signature (hence the question), but they’re not really necessary for garage hobby work, besides not many people have the power, the space or the floor to support such machines at home.

People can and do do great work on tormach’s, particularly the 1100, in all sorts of materials from wood and plastics to tool steels and titanium. There are other machines of similar flavours in the way of novakon, skyfire, syil etc. all of which have users doing great work in harder stuff and holding size when they need them to, but none will move a lot of material in a hurry. All are far more substantial and not to be confused with the taig’s, denfords, siegs of this world but you’re right they’re no VMC, they sit somewhere in between. That’s the difference between a £20-30k machine aimed at the home user and a £50-60k machine aimed at a commercial user. Support and slack would fall into that too.

Point is, these machines have a market because they can and do work well for a lot of people who don’t demand too much of them. If you like to keep your car clean you don’t go out and spend 10’s of thousands on an industrial car wash. You buy a little jet wash and a couple of buckets. You reach the same results, but it takes you longer.