I'm looking to put my first CNC machine in the garage. A friend's boss has a Partner III for sale. The owner of the mill is replacing it with a Hurco Eagle. This owner is a private "tinker in my garage" owner, and the machine has not ran production. According to the information I've been given:
has drip feed for control
10 hours on rebuilt head
only cut plastic before the current owner
needs new conduit for the umbilical
The owner is an instructor at a university, and rebuilds / works on CNC equipment as a hobby. In a prior life he was a CNC maintenance tech, so he has a lot of connections for parts, rebuilds, piles of misc boards / controllers, etc. He's offered to help me set up a 4th axis on the unit, assist with any troubleshooting, etc.
He claims the head on the unit was rebuilt about 40 hours ago. He said it runs great, and will hold .0005" tolerance. He's also offered to help build a RPC to run this machine (as well as a manual mill), offered to help me rebuild a used Lagun manual mill, etc.
The price I've been given for the above machine is $2000. The unit has the Centurion IV controller. He claims he's never used the drip feed, but that the hardware is included. This is important, as I plan on using a CAD/CAM software setup to generate G-code. He also has copies of the parameters for the machine, and said he's replaced the OEM memory battery with a "4-D cell unit, so you shouldn't have to worry about that for a while".
My plan is to use the machine on plastic, possibly wood, aluminum, and steel. My anticipated usage would fit on the traditional 9x42 table, but as always, bigger is better. This will be a prototyping / one-off machine in my shop, not a production rig. I would like to be able to make some molds for injection molded plastics, as well as create parts for my motorcycles, guns, RC aircraft, and whatever else blows up my skirt. I plan on generating my G-code with MasterCam, which I have access to at school.
What do you all think of this machine, at this price point? Again, this will be my first CNC. I -had- been shopping the Tormach / Novakon units, but I decided I'd rather go with a used servo controlled machine, vs the stepper units.
This unit puts me in kind of an interesting spot in regards to my first CNC purchase. It's an old unit, with limited Z travel, and an old controller. Those are negatives. On the flip side, it's been maintained by someone actually competent in the area, assured to be in "excellent" condition, and moreover, the seller has offered post-sale support for maintenance, upkeep, and expansion (see 4th-axis offer, above). Given my current (entry level) knowledge, it would seem that the maintenance / support / "will travel to your house some weekend, and we can ride motorcycles / work on CNC's" offer would be worth a significant $$ amount, by itself. Any other used CNC in this price point is likely (IMO) to need rebuilt / work, and I would expect it to be 100% "my problem" once I haul it away.
It seems this isn't the ideal machine, but that it may be an excellent opportunity to make chips NOW (vs stumbling through a 3-year self-taught rebuild), as well as having access to a hardware "knowledge base" during my initial (steep) learning curve. Thoughts?