[skray775]

WOW... thank you for pointing out that section of the warranty. Sounds like they are basically off the hook for just about anything that could go wrong.

Please don't take this wrong, Randy, but have you READ THE FLIPPIN' WARANTY?

It is in the nature of CNC equipment to have glitches. You, as a self-interested user, COULD be taking measures to make your machine at least reliable, if not as fast as stock. But you would rather b***h about what you THINK Tormach should be doing and what you THINK the warranty might say. You were warned up front if you TOOK THE TIME TO READ THE WARRANTY.

This thread is beyond the point of amusement any more.

Good luck with your situation.

Randy

[zephyr9900]

Kelly, for a counterpoint check my post at http://www.cnczone.com/forums/1059950-post9.html

Randy

[David Bord]

I find it interesting that people are paying attn to wording in the warranty when Tormach has proven countless times that they surpass pretty much all of their customers expectations... And they have for years, despite wording that has to be there to protect them from unreasonable situations. They have proven their commitment to customer service over and over again, and me personally.

Vader, I really hope you sort it out. Despite your experience, Tormach is a quality product that stands above the rest in their segment. I'm very sorry your experience has not been the same.

Bob, I hope you can see this is an isolated case, and realize that Tormachs products and service are truly exceptional. I've had my machine for over 4 years and can't express enough on what incredible amount of fun it has been learn to machine on my Tormach mill and what great service they have provided myself and countless others.

David

[philbur]

Read it? I took part in it. Can you please point me to the post that talks about "Dead On Arrival".

You should try not to be so easily lead by the mob, be more critical about what is actually going on here.

It's amazing how a hundred good reports seem to be instantly negated by one bad report. The reverse is never true however.


Phil

This post would suggest otherwise. Have you read it?

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/tormac...f_tormach.html

I am still considering a 770, but, will wait to see how the OP's problem is resolved.

[oknups]

Read it? I took part in it. Can you please point me to the post that talks about "Dead On Arrival".

You should try not to be so easily lead by the mob, be more critical about what is actually going on here.

It's amazing how a hundred good reports seem to be instantly negated by one bad report. The reverse is never true however.


Phil

in the referenced post it is comment #8, the quote "here is my honest review of the machine.
my machine arived dead on arival. the spindle motor wouldn't work. i called tormach to do some trouble shooting. after a few ideas, it was determined the vfd was bad. a new vfd was sent and i swapped it out. the spindle motor still didn't work. i spent some more time trouble shooting over the phone with tormach and it all came back to the vfd. another vfd was sent out and i swapped the replacement for the newer replacement. this time it worked and has been working since."

[slowtwitch]

Not being a Tormach owner (I do have a Mikini, which has it's own set of problems), I don't see Tormach doing anything wrong. there is only so much a company can do. It's still probably the best machine in this price arena.

I will admit, if it was my machine, I would have torn it apart , just to find out what the problem was. I couldn't care less about a warranty. I did it on my Mikini

Although it seems that Vader has come to some kind of resolution with Tormach, I hope that the cause of Vader's machine problem comes to light, so other folks with a similar situation can benefit from the information.

Many times on these forums, folks have issues, find a solution and never post the end result....

[smallblock]

[QUOTE=Winnfield;1059956]I think people are being a bit hard on Tormach here. I don't own one, and really have no use for one, but from an objective standpoint, one of the things you are NOT buying when you buy a Tormach is for someone to get on a plane to solve someone's issue. That would establish a precedent that has no place in their business model.


That reminds me of a story from a long time ago- A friend of mine owned a small foreign car dealership specializing in British Sports cars. ( If you think Chinese mills are unreliable, you should have been around in the 50's and 60's) Anyway, this friend was also a pilot and had a small plane. One day one of his customers who had just had some repair work done on a Morgan called and said his car had stalled about 200 miles away from my friend's shop. My friend loved to fly his plane, and after a bit of phone diagnosis he figured out what the problem was- went to the airport with some tools and parts and flew to where the Morgan was sitting. The car was fixed and on the road in a short time and my friend flew back home. The whole episode took up the better part of one day and my friend got to spend some time flying his plane. The story of the flying mechanic circulated among the sports car community and eventually became a local legend. Over the years its hard to say how much business that story generated, but my friend eventually ended up owning one of the largest import dealerships around and retired a wealthy man.

Of course that was long before the internet and forums like these. Today a story like that would probably encourage every guy with a loose bolt to demand someone fly out and tighten it for him.

[pete from TN]

The one takeaway any machinist should have here is that CNC machines are not turnkey machines. Even for expensive VMC's you can find tales not unlike this one all day long. Spindles mysteriously seize up not long after purchase. Stuff quits working. We can find this for Haas and all sorts of other machines. It all costs a LOT to fix. The machinist that can successfully diagnose and deal with these problems is a lot happier and more productive. It turns out to be part of the job.

Cheers,

BW[/QUOTE]


This is all true. Brand new VMC's quite often have issues right out of the box and often it DOES cost a LOT of money to repair it. the difference here tho is that with a VMC there is usually a warranty that will be honored and a trained service tech CAN and WILL be sent out to investigate the machine and parts are readily available. The machinist is generally NOT left to his own devices to troubleshoot the machine nor repair it. Even if the machine is a used VMC unless it is quite old there are parts available either from the original manufacturer or from aftermarket suppliers or even used parts dealers. The same applies to the trained technicians. Most of the larger name manufacturers have service techs and if they do not there are professional technicians that specialize in specific lines of machines. On a used machine this would be of course the duty of the machinist/owner to pay for but it IS available for most lines. The difference here is that again as nice as the Tormach is and IMHO from what I read it really is a decent little machine, at the end of the day it is a chinese CNC bedmill with questionable quality and parts designed to be inexpensive and generally geared towards a hobby or prototype usage. Getting Tormach to purchase this machine back quite honestly is a BIG DEAL because as you said they cannot afford to send out a technician. Mostly because they cannot afford to employ people nor pay for them to travel because compared to ANY of the major manufacturers of Commercial equipment Tormach is a very small fry. If you purchase a Tormach you are going to have to live with this and do your own troubleshooting as this fellow has had to. If a solution cannot be found then this result is about the best you can expect from them. This is quite honestly IMHO a good result of a serious problem on this fellows machine and I honestly do not think you will see this kind of result very often. Fortunately as some of the other owners here have stated Tormach usually will find a solution and generally will maintain the customer's satisfaction. That is admirable for what this machine is.

Personally I would much rather buy even a used VMC any day over the Tormach especially at it's price point when fully equipped. If you speak to most professional machinists they will tell you that the Tormach is mostly considered to be a serious compromise at best and about any vmc will run circles around it in about every category, power, speed, accuracy, etc. etc.. It does have it's place and as seen here there are many loyal and satisfied customers out there. Having a similar machine myself I honestly cannot imagine doing anything that would really be called production on it. It is far too slow, not terribly precise, and the travels are small compared to about any vmc. Somehow tho that does not stop folks from buying them as I read almost daily of people either buying or considering buying one on here. You pays your money and you takes your chances. I am curious as to what the final arrangements for returning the machine are and who is paying for what. Even if this fellow winds up paying to return the machine it is a pretty good result given the circumstances altho he probably will not feel that way. Peace

Pete

[photomankc]

People saying "I was going to buy a Tormach until now" can't be serious. This is ONE example, with hundreds of others the opposite. Just about every other problem that has crept up in these machines was solved with cooperation between the customer and the Company, and they have just about always retained the customer's satisfaction, so, could it be that the ONE machine may have a defect or problem that ONE GUY's attitude won't let get fixed? It's possible. It's been brought up a few times in this thread. Do you believe the testimonial of the hundreds of people who make parts with the machine every day, then let them all be discounted by one guy who had to be told repeatedly that he's hard to help?

What I've said, I can't speak for anyone else, is that I saw this as the worst case and was initially disappointed in the options Tormach was offering. It is not reasonable to expect.... in my opinion.... a purchaser to go on for weeks and months diagnosing, swapping, fiddling all the while unable to get it to do what you purchased it to do. It looked at first as though Tormach's stance was that it was his job to continue this process indefinitely or pay a fee to to have gotten that one bad apple. That turned me off and is not an apples to apples comparison with a dented this or failed that which is replaced and your back on the road again which they certainly have shown they will do and more. I worry about it because as I have made light of often, I seem to be the butt of Murphey's jokes when I buy a good name brand that everyone raves about.

Now it seems that they have in fact done the best I could have expected them to do here. After it has become clear that this is not going to be quickly or simply diagnosed and fixed by phone support they are taking the machine back. People will continue to quibble over it I'm sure and how long it took or why they did it but there was nothing better to be expected in my mind. All the talk of flying engineers, on-site service, etc and so forth seemed unreasonable to me as well.

The options are indeed few and so having returned it, I'm not sure where the OP goes to get a machine to do this work in this price range that would offer any better support in the event of problems like this. I know you can certainly do much worse.

[mactec54]

photomankc

I think Tormach did more than try to accomnodate him with his machine, I ran the program & cut the part that he had the video crash on, I could not & would not run his program as it was programed, until I corrected it

I think there was a lot more going on than ( Just machine problems if there were any ) When he had the crash in the Video, He had just changed the Z depth by .500 the machine crashed only by the .500 into the work, Nobody will know for sure, because we do not have the program or what he did before the crash or how he made the change, He was not using offsets G54 Etc so the change the OP made most likely caused the crash

I think there have been more opperator error than machine problems, But everyone can only speculate, It would be great to hear from Tormach as to how much was machine error/problems related to these crashes

[VaderSpade]

Everyone here seems to know more about any resolution then I do. So far without talking to me first Tormach has issued a refund. Someone here said it was a full refund; I don’t even know that for sure as the money is not yet back in my account.

Hours later Tormach sent me and e-mail stating that I’m to send the machine back and they will fix or replace it at their option????

I have more questions than answers. I think we are on the right road BUT we are not home yet.

[Bob La Londe]

Everyone here seems to know more about any resolution then I do. So far without talking to me first Tormach has issued a refund. Someone here said it was a full refund; I don’t even know that for sure as the money is not yet back in my account.

Hours later Tormach sent me and e-mail stating that I’m to send the machine back and they will fix or replace it at their option????

I have more questions than answers. I think we are on the right road BUT we are not home yet.

Keep us posted. Some of us have a strong interest in how it all shakes out.

[MichaelHenry]

Having heard only one side of the story I think it is unwise to make any kind of judgment. 100+ customers rave about Tormach support, one customer claims it stinks. On several occasions I myself have received support way beyond what any reasonable person would have the right to expect.

Something isn't adding up here.

Phil

+1

I've also had terrific support from Tormach and that's with a Series I mill that is close to 5 years old.

[MichaelHenry]

There seem to be a number of posters here that don't own a Tormach, have had no dealings with Tormach, have no firsthand experience of the level and quality of support that Tormach provide and have no independent information on what has transpired between the OP and Tormach, yet they seem to feel they are qualified to provide advice to Tormch on how they should handle this particular situation(group). Priceless.

Phil

Welcome to the Internet!

As an aside, I've seen many downright erroneous posts made on just about any Internet forum and CNC Zone is no exception and possibly worse than most. I can see why Tormach might want to dissuade owners from following advice here, especially from the pundits that seem to have popped up in this thread.

[MichaelHenry]

I have even been keeping an eye out for low hours used ones.

Good luck with that unless you happen upon an estate sale or auction.

What other CNC mills are you considering?

Mike

[MichaelHenry]

In this case I think they've done themselves a dis-service. They'd have won much more credit if they'd put someone in a plane and actually diagnosed/solved the problem.

And what happens the next time some has a problem and then complains that you didn't send someone out to fix it for them too? It seems perfectly acceptable to me that the user is expected to affect repairs without benefit of an on-site service tech and Tormach made that clear to me when I bought and believe they make that clear in their advertising and warranty. If on-site support is expected, pony up the money and by a Haas or something similar.

[Winnfield]

What I've said, I can't speak for anyone else, is that I saw this as the worst case and was initially disappointed in the options Tormach was offering. It is not reasonable to expect.... in my opinion.... a purchaser to go on for weeks and months diagnosing, swapping, fiddling all the while unable to get it to do what you purchased it to do.

I would agree, except that Tormach doesn't expect that - they expect it to take 2 seconds if you are brilliant, and forever if you are clueless. That is precisely why they outline the rules about it clearly. It isn't an 80lb. machine that can be shipped, and it doesn't have wheels, so they have to handle it some way. It might be unreasonable for them to do things this way if this machine were fighter-jet complex, but it isn't. There IS a solution somewhere, and tracking it down depends very heavily on how receptive the user is to feedback, advice, etc. Their policies cannot accommodate everyone equally because of differences in competence, attitude, etc. It's like anything else in life.

[photomankc]

Wow, so 2 seconds now? Man. We're all outclassed here.


There is just nothing in between on the Internet is there?


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[Winnfield]

Wow, so 2 seconds now? Man. We're all outclassed here.


There is just nothing in between on the Internet is there?


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

I don't know what you mean. My point was that Tormach can't control how astute their customers are, so all they can do is provide support like sending parts and helping with the troubleshooting. People can be anywhere from genius to incompetent, and Tormach can't concern themselves with that and still stay in business. All they can do is make as many of their machines work as close to perfect as possible for the money they get for them.

[dbrija]

And what happens the next time some has a problem and then complains that you didn't send someone out to fix it for them too? It seems perfectly acceptable to me that the user is expected to affect repairs without benefit of an on-site service tech and Tormach made that clear to me when I bought and believe they make that clear in their advertising and warranty. If on-site support is expected, pony up the money and by a Haas or something similar.

In general cases (i.e. 99.99% of the issues), I would agree. However, in this case, when self help, parts exchange, etc... did not solve the problem, it seems like you would want to offer something on site as a final resort.