[RipsCanada]

My wife and I want to do some overflow work for some local robotic places as well as some of our own stuff. It is very hard to find used machines that will fit in a garage. We have seen our school selling Red/Cam benchtop machines but they need absolutely too much work. It would be cheaper to buy new than replace everything. The ones we have at work are Fadal/Fanuc 4030 and they are slightly too big as far as home power requirements. Something in the middle of that and tiny benchtop would work well. We would not want an ANILAM either. Any ideas of machines we can get in Canada or across the border easily?

[hanermo]

I could not imagine anything useful commercial existing for 5k.

Min budget for anything commercial, working, seems to be 15-25 k.
All sorts of tiny commercial machines exist, but they aree all twice the money,30-50 k, used, as none of them are old, as of yet.

Tormach or Novakon, second hand, is probably the only option.


Fixer-uppers in the 3-8 k$ range exist, but all will need 3-8 k in parts, and 100-300 hours of work, and can you troubleshoot a commercial machine ?
Btw many will not have manuals/parameters available, or they are hard to get, and can cost 500$-800 $ just for the manuals.

Cheapest new chinese machines, 15-20 k$, in china, add == 30% in costs landed.

[DareBee]

good luck

Leadwell MCV-0 Vertical CNC Machining Center | business, industrial | Cambridge | Kijiji
1993 Hurco CNC knee mill | business, industrial | Stratford | Kijiji

[hanermo]

The referenced leadwell machine would be fine for me.
But its 10 kW, 600V.

Dont think it fits in the garage sized work intended.
Hurco has no toolchanger.

Useless for commercial work intended.
You cannot do anythign profitably, for others, as a small-run jobshop, without a toolchanger.

That was the goal of the OP, imo, as I understood it.


Futher addition.
Tools for commercial machines ..
add about 5000 $ at the low end, with basic metrology, all import stuff in the lower quality area, but mostly usable.

12-20k at a mid-end.

[DareBee]

If the OPs budget is 5K - those are the only options that will be available and must be "made do" with.
Yes - moving installing will easily be 2g and 5g of tooling will be required to start making parts but still not what was asked about
Thanks for your help though

[RipsCanada]

Most of stuff we machine at work is CRS, 4140 simple NAAMS style welding fixture jig parts. I can run most of then on a few tools and farm out wetjet. I'm the designer/CNC programmer, waterjet file guy and sometimes builder so know what is possible with a simple machine and a bridgeport. Most shops pay around $80/hr machine time in general and there is such a shortage of CNC operators and pgmers that they have no choice but to outsource. A few of those machines along with my existing tools would certainly come in handy. i am thinking a $15K used Fadal 4030 would be my best bet as I know how to run it extremely efficient with a few special tools I have but in the mean time I was hoping a Tormach would work or Novaakon. Going to look into those more as I cannot even reach RED/CAM. I had my eye on a used Red/Cam unit but its missing the controller. $1500 base with new ballscrew was not too bad.

[gfacer2]

I follow (or used to - just stopped) centroid controller machines on ebay and some of them can be quite reasonable as usually they were a refit to start with. Plus support is pretty good from Centroid or their independent techs. You would need to ship in the machine though so I don't know about 5k CAD (or USD) but you never know.