[LangleyWoodworker]

Have been searching around the forums for feedback on different Chinese manufacturers and settled on 3 so far:
1. AccTek (friend had good experience with them)
2. Blue Elephant
3. Quick-Fulltek CNC

Machines are all priced fairly similarly: $13K - $14.6K with door to door shipping. Cheaper machine is cast iron, 60V hybrid steppers and all axis on ball screws. More expensive machines are 220V hybrid steppers and rack-and-pinion on XY. Machines are 1212/1313 with ATC and vacuum tables. I'm leaning towards Quick CNC as they're 1313, and also happen to fall in the middle of the price range.

Anyone know of any reason to stay away from any of the manufacturers? Or has anyone had any recent experience with them?
Wanted to do a final check just in case.

[allencncrouter]

Now Shipping charge is not stable ,suggest Fob ,CIF ,DDU , different price .
What brand ,power ,ATC spindle and control system is one important things.

[LangleyWoodworker]

I'm just looking for feedback on the manufacturers.

[cncmakers001]

Please note the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is coming, the production lead time and shipping time could be longer than usual.

[phil m]

I bought an Acctek AKM6012 recently. It arrived just before Christmas. All went well, no issues with them. They were easy to deal with, quick on the email replies and customer service was quick too. I couldn't get Mach3 setup properly on the machine (Didn't want the pendant style controllers) so one of their techs just logged remotely to my PC and set it up in no time.

I'm loving the machine and what I can do with it compared to my old homemade CNC. I would buy again from them if I ever decide to upgrade for a larger machine.

[elephantcnc]

Dear Friend,
I am glad to receive your inquiry. This is BLUE ELEPHANT CNC MACHINERY CO., LTD. We can provide satisfied service of cnc router machine for customers all over the world, with more than 10 years experience in Jinan city, China.

Could you please leave your email address? I will let our sales to send you details and quotations.And feel free to contact us, welcome to email us [email protected], or chat with us by whatsapp / wechat +86 150 6402 6772 etc.

Any reply will be highly appreciated.
Sincerely,
BLUE ELEPHANT

[LangleyWoodworker]

Thanks for the responses and recommendations. I've gone with Quick, hoping to have it here in the next two months or so.
Will post feedback and experience once done.

[LangleyWoodworker]

So it's been more than a couple months but I did end up getting the QuickCNC router in August and have it set up and running now.

Overall a happy experience though not without its issues (as I imagine would be the case for pretty much any Chinese sourced system).

What I got in the end:
SWIFT 1313 ATC
RichAuto B57 DSP
2.2kW spindle
Leadshine hybrid steppers (IMO regular steppers have no place in CNC routers)
Vacuum table
2x 3.5kW rotary vane vacuum pumps (220V 3PH)
2x 3.7kW Fuling VFD's for the vacuum pumps
Electronic valves for vacuum zones
Custom design vacuum plenum
Castors to make it easier to move the machine
Also got them to route the dust collection hose along the machine so I don't have it suspended

Overall the machine is great.
* Confirmed accuracy within 0.01mm (0.0005")
* Travel speeds up to 15m/min (590 IPS)
* I run the vacuum pump at 67% for most sheet goods, gets about 10 inHg / 5 PSI at max. Might add the second pump in series eventually.

Lessons learned:
* ATC requires constant air at about 2.2-2.4 CFM @ 90 PSI (so double that for 50% duty cycle). I ended up getting 2 quiet 1HP compressors to get me to 50% duty cycle, and will be adding a third for redundancy.
* Multiple 1HP air compressors are quieter than a single 2HP compressor (mostly due to much stronger vibration from the larger compressor)
* RichAuto DSP is fine but very limiting and has basically no support for it in English. This will probably be the first part of the machine to get upgraded when I get fed up with it completely. I would suggest to go with the cheapest option and upgrade to Masso yourself (same price as the upgrade to B57).
* The hybrid steppers are plenty strong enough though so make some vibration sounds at very low speeds (think a few cm/min, so very slow)
* 2.2 kW spindle is plenty strong enough and the extra RPM is great for smaller bits
* The vacuum zone valves are great
* Moving to electronic vacuum zone valves apparently removed the vacuum gauge so I had to put that back in myself.
* So far I've machined aluminum sheets, HDPE, plywood and MDF and the machine has been great (aluminum is a pain to machine obviously)
* Castors made moving the machine really easy - highly recommend
* It's great to have replacement parts for almost everything. I've gone through 4-5 tool holders so far while learning the machine and the issues/limitations of the DSP
* No air hose line was included, and I had to find an adapter between the water line and the water pump
* Some of the wiring is weird, where the tool length sensor won't work unless the switch for the dust collector is turned on. And the valves for the vacuum zones won't work without the vacuum pump switch turned on (though the vacuum pump itself is switched completely separately via VFD)
* Generally all electrical is very high quality - great components, neat writing
* I would recommend to ask them to run extra length of wiring to the be controller board so you can change the control board later without having to change the wiring. Something I wish I did and will probably cause some headache if I decide to swap the DSP to a Masso controller
* You'll need wiring from the machine to the plug - I'd suggest to have them include a bunch of thick wire for this as they'll probably charge you far less. 30A 220V 1PH is enough for the machine and vacuum pump (my dust collector and air compressors are 110V)
* They're more than capable to customize your machine in any way you want, so I would suggest to make requests based on my lessons learned
* You do need to check every little thing as some things they failed to do, though that was all small things (I asked for extra vacuum pump switch that they forgot, they didn't tell me the vacuum gauge would be missing, they didn't include the ISO20 tightening fixture they promised), though they are sending the missing things, so at least there's that.
* Generally the construction is really good
* They're able to connect me with an engineer via Weibo and they helped me to resolve some issues (using Google translate) on the weekend

I've got everything inside an enclosure and while cutting plywood it's at about 62dB right beside the enclosure. This is with the dust collector, vacuum pump, and two compressors all inside the enclosure as well. Though thanks to the vacuum pump it gets pretty toasty inside the enclosure after about an hour of cutting, but nothing overheating and generally it all operates not much hotter than without the enclosure.

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to answer.

[Vidon]

Hello LangleyWoodworker, please tell me about your experience with your machine SWIFT 1313 ATC. How does your machine holds up so far, any issues, accuracy. I am a newbie and think about getting swift 1313 ATC. Your advices please. Thanks,

[allencncrouter]

Customer's impression about Omni ATC cnc router
https://youtu.be/ou4yc27dMZ8

[LangleyWoodworker]

Hello LangleyWoodworker, please tell me about your experience with your machine SWIFT 1313 ATC. How does your machine holds up so far, any issues, accuracy. I am a newbie and think about getting swift 1313 ATC. Your advices please. Thanks,

I've actually since sold the machine because someone was willing to pay a premium for having it expedited. But in the time that I had it, it worked perfectly. Any issues that I had with it were user related and the guys at Quick were able to help out.

For what it's worth, I did go with another company this time around and just waiting on it being built. Their machine is just a bit stronger and they're making some additional changes that I wanted.

If you're just starting looking, DM me and I'll be happy to give you my agent's contact and answer any questions.