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I have built my business on old iron no one wanted bc they couldn't figure out how to fix them. I fixed them up and have been in successful business for 14yrs. Admittedly I am not a production shop, most of my work is engineering and making parts for broken equipment in various industries.
My sister's first boyfriend (and my brother and I's ex best friend) family has a pretty successful shop that has the same type of philosophy. They basically don't want to add a machine payment to reduce overhead. It works for them, they mostly do big, big stuff. But, they could probably replace all their machines with 1 new one and get more production out. Granted, their smallest part is measured in feet, not inches or millimeters. So the price of a new (or newer) machine wouldn't be cheap. They have done a few parts for us and watching the videos, they were machined painfully slow.
Hehe. Hitachi Seiki... they are awesome, and yes, a little hard to work on since they often run their own Seicos PLC alongside the Fanuc motion control system. Retrofit it with a Centroid controller. It turns them into superstars.
Right now doing a retrofit for a friend of a 24 years old machining center with newer Allin1DC Centroid controller. Hopefully we will make the machine move soon. He's a machinist but don't know so much in electrical. I've done an Acorn retrofit on a small CNC router and currently making a plasma table with Acorn as well.
Love my Nissin Nst-40 150 2tsc. It was 26,000 pounds, with a 45 kw motor. 18" kitagawa chuck. Thing is a beast. So rigid, so powerful. Hardest part is like most, it wanted 125 amps. Nissin is now SNK, they have great support. The okuma lb-15 with a big bore is astonishingly good.
Long time ego way back in 1964 I was working in a metal fabrication shop in Germany. Our equipment was ok but post WW1 era. One day our maintenance guys had come and carried out all the equipment to the backyard and started to cut them into scrap. The new equipment was installed and running the same day. I was told that the old equipment has to be scrapped to prevent resale. The newly purchased equipment could be written off in a few years. It was done to update the country's machine industry. here in America I was working in a few shops where the equipment was pre WW2 date. Nothing but old worn out junk. No wonder that our machine tool and most of metal working industry gone to overseas.
Similar tale in the UK in the early 80s . As an apprentice I spotted a brass ID plate on a milling machine : it said “ Air Ministry Property “ The make of machine was Fritz Werner Berlin . I asked one of the old Fitters it’s history . He told me it was commandeered post 1945 and brought back to England . I asked what did the Germans do ? He replied “ they got new ones “ 😂
I’ve picked up 3 swarf conveyors from machines being scrapped. We got rid of a HS vm40 because if was a piece of junk and our repair guy said to get rid of it. He happily repaired our old 1985 Mazak v20 until the tool changer electrics became too unreliable and hard to find bits for. It’s was a brilliant old machine and was sad to see if go. If we had the workshop space we would have kept it and retrofit new controls as it had huge Z axis travels and was stupidly rigid. We replaced it with a newer FJV which is also an impressive machine but we have had to outsource some machining because of the less Z travel. We have a workshop full of 90’s mazaks and with regular maintenance and cleaning we keep them running nice and making great parts.
If you’ve been to any well organized auction lately, they won’t let you do anything to the machines on site. People were stripping out the boards, drives, and other bits and abandoning the iron. I’ve seen some guys pair up with scrappers and carve em up in the parking lot
Defiantly agree that if you can't shift or repair a machine yourself, it probaly isn't a project to take on, but there is some circumstances where it can work out economicly. At my work we have done a control retrofit on a Mazak M4 that was in good mechanical conditon, and we are well in front compared to buying a new one. we have also scrapped a few machines that were to worn to be of any value.
I know a guy with several super old cnc machines 3 mills and 2 lathes. The business that was renting his building just closed their doors and left them with the arrangement he could have everything in lieu of back rent. He’s been trying to sell them for 2 years. But they still sit there taking up rentable space because he believes that because they were $100,000 new 30 years ago, they’re worth something now. I looked them over and they’re exactly what an abandoned machine would look like. One of the lathes is an early Hardinge cnc, and they’re good iron the spindle still had no runout with 50,000+ hours on it, but the controls are beyond archaic. It still had a slot for a tape reader. Against my better judgement I offered to take a little cnc Enco lathe missing it’s transformer in exchange for helping him sell some of the more marketable small tooling but he wanted $8000 for it. A machine buyer stopped by, probably out of pity, and wouldn’t even take them for parts / scrap for free. Unless it’s a machine you can personally load on a drop deck trailer or haul some other way, like you’re a competent rigger with access to the stuff you need to move a machine, even a free machine will cost thousands to move. It’s funny how many guys with microwaves that have clocks still blinking 12:00 think they can repair 40 year old electronics.
Google search shopfloorautomations. Also centroid retrofits make old iron new. Can even run old yellow cap fanuc DC servos and communicate. Those old boxway with hardened tool steel ways, cnc's, are built in a way that wouldn't be economically viable today. Even rebuilding those old servos and spindles are economical today and they last twice as long with accuracy as modern stuff.
While his advice is true don't take that as there are no good older machines for sale that will work just fine for many peoples purposes. A company may get rid of a perfectly good machine because there are ones that run faster and over three shifts a day it adds up but if you need one for one off or low volume production a brand new machine would take years to pay for itself if it ever does where a good used older one will take a much shorter time to do so.
You are 100% right. If a machine gets old spare parts are getting hard to find, what is the next part that fails, how accurate are they still. It probably made its money trough its entire life.
Great advice! , the temptation of restoring an old cnc can really open a can of worms 😂. I decided to take on a 1990 Moog Mhp A15, 3 tons of boxed way 3 axis mill, dc servo's, analogue amplifiers and unsupported Hydrapath 3 control. It has taken a huge amount of time to keep it running, making test rigs to repair the amplifiers, re capping boards etc, had to create a custom post processor for it, very slow blocks per second processing rate when drip feeding. Just blown another servo amplifier 😢. Now the reality is either scrap it or retrofit with centroid and new servo's, lots of cost and time plus headache of writing custom plc program for gear change and tool changer. Overall a complete waste of time but educational. Just seems such a waste to scrap nice castings, ball screws and precision surfaces
We've scrapped three Hitachi Seiki VA40s. Great machines but the electronics just got to hard to have repaired and retrofit just wasn't cost effective.
Once got a -87 Beaver on auction. Big 7ton boxway mill with atc. Spent time replacing the monitor, cleaning for weeks and even having the sheetmetal powdercoated... Aaand then ended up scrapping it. So Im with ya! Scrap em!
The machine behind you, the one you say you are selling parts for, which brand/ model is it? Thanks for this channel, I recently took a job as a CAM programmer/ CNC machine operator at a company here in Holland. They run two old Okumas, an LCS25 and an LB35-II. Both have issues, I hear from the operator the small one is probably end of life. I have yet to get experienced with them though. Another issue may be that we want to program with Hypermill in the future and apparently the programs it generates can be much larger and may be an issue for the machine memory, any experience with that? Thanks a lot.
Once again, i have to agree with you Aaron. Im not long after scrapping a hitachi seiki ht23riii 😂 Then again i replaced it with an even older, more obsolete beaver tc20 which was almost free. I will say my justification was it was infinately more serviceable than the hitachi. Hopefully this will be my last true dinosaur 🦕
build my business using old machines , takes time to keep them running but i sure make a ton of production on them . did not have the money to purchase a bunch of brand new machines straight out of the gate . so i bought old and repaired . kept adding to the collection of old machines . and only after 15 years i now start replacing the machines 1 by 1 to "newwer" machines
It's very tempting to buy old machines at auctions. One just last week had the travels equivalent to a Haas VF5 and "no saled" with an starting bid of $250. Most of the things that you mention went thru my head as to why I it would be a bad idea to even think about it.
I make a living out of pressing parts. Couldn't have done it without my old CNC with Fanuc 6 controls to make the press tools on. I'll be keeping them as long as possible, they're lucky to run more than a few weeks a year. With any luck I'll be able to see them reach PENSION age! Fingers crossed!
Hi buddy . Like you video & philosophy . A Question. I have a 2002 Multicam MG that has just had a spindle rebuild but the rest of the electronics ( Stepper Drives ) are getting , shall we say " Crispy " . Multicam charge rediculous prices for spares ( If they even hold them ) so i`m looking at refitting with something like Gecko drives & servos. My question is , is it cost effective to go this route or is it better to scrap what is machanically a pretty good machine and buy a brand new NOT Multicam ?
I’d literally be the happiest guy to come across some old unused equipment. I love manual machines especially but with my income I can’t even afford a harbor freight lathe lol. Besides they are junk anyway maybe someday I’ll save up for a old swasey I live right next to Warner and swasey Cleveland Ohio
if someone wanted to teach themselves cnc now ...where, what and how is the way to approach this? It seems there are so many platforms and resources.. do anyone have any tips or resources (yt channels, websites, cources etc.) they have found to be really good and helpful?
We have old Bridgeport cncs. We also hoard parts. BMDC, FMDC boards drive amps, motors, old 486 mother boards. ISA backplanes, etc. 486 single board computers are gold.
"forklift stuck in the asphalt" my last machine move was so .... ????? to my wife "if the foor cracks when i move it in place we are renting a commercial space" (it was a very new machine tho, we just need a diferent space soon i think) . as for old. it kinda makes me cry seeing old "built this country" equipment die. saw a huge 90's mazak (large enough to park a truck on the table... with a second table that auto swapped) go at auction for 5k. now it lives in a tarp tent and never did get recommisioned, i bet the winter frost has destryed it... worked perfect when the company closed the doors and went to auction :(
the only thing that needs to be scraped with a machining center is the electronics, the cast iron structure can be reused infinitely as long as its not rusted.
I mostly agree. The problem is that the electronics, and machining the items necessary for a retrofit, can cost more than purchasing a newer machine (or even a new machine). I am actively rebuilding one machine at the moment (due to rust, so it's truly a rebuild and not a retrofit), with a couple small hobbyist ones in the queue after it. The rebuild is costing more than my purchase price of the machine. I expect that it will be very nice after the rebuild, but it is not actually profitable for me to be doing this. In part, I am doing it so I have a complete understanding of the machine, and therefore can maintain it myself.
@@r2db just having a good structure Is a great start, if you chose your machines carefully, there's a line between a toy machine and a real casting, if you get a real casting it doesn't really matter what modern electronics you put on it, whether its an acorn or edding or even a full siemens package for 20k. I'm building my machine from scratch, having the structures cast from meehanite, I'd love to get my hands on a used machine and just use the casting, unfortunately there does not exist a machine with the type of a casting that I want.
Our business has been a buy and retrofit/rebuild model based on the iron outliving the electronics. Fewer than 5% of our machines are brought back with the original controls. Lately we are scrapping even newer machines due the resale value of the parts and the physical condition of the machines. Machines destroyed by (neglected) coolant are often not economically-viable to rebuild and retrofit.
@@Dancing_Alone_wRentals Most are easy to fix if you know what you're doing. I picked up an old but decent VMC with mitsubishi controls because the spindle drive needed repairs. The owner was quoted $3k to repair, and he had just spent money getting it fixed. They did a terrible job repairing it the first time, and their bad repair caused the further issues. I was able to fix it for $70 in parts, and 2 or 3 evenings of work. I've since torn the whole machine down to clean everything, and in the process of putting it back together. That's kind-of dragged into a super long project, as it's a hobby project, and one guy doing it in his garage - the pieces are almost too big to deal with with one person in a garage with an engine hoist, but slowly but surely...
That is fascinating to me @@gorak9000 . The patience you must posses is remarkable. These machines and the repairs they need over time are most interesting. I was told that Xerox could not sell their first copiers, so they leased them. The leases took off. That shop owner had bill after bill and seemed like had few choices but to throw in the towel on your machine. I know trash compactors are mostly leased so that stores don't worry about repairs outside of a fixed budget. ....and the behind the scenes of knowing with $70 dollar part is needed....Amazing.
Interesting. I don’t really know any company that can run profitably for a long time doing retrofits. Most customers are just not willing to spend the money to do it correctly.
We have an old Cincinnati Arrow that has servo drive issues, at first it wouldn't work at all without having the 4th axis plugged in. Finally now it won't work even with the 4th axis plugged in. The parts are all discontinued for the drives and servos and because its a government facility it is impossible to even hire someone to repair drives or purchase drives used from eBay or anything. Its really a shame because when it was working this machine was straight bananas fast and accurate with a super high-speed ceramic bearing spindle. I have built several machines in my free time outside work and know how to wire them and I still can't get anyone to approve retrofitting it even though previously I had the time to do it.
I like old iron: Bulky: Bulk steel equates rigidity, Rigidity equates accuracy, Accuracy equates good parts. I liked troubleshooting them...too close to retirement now...This guy though: I'd listen to him..
My dad bought a 2500$ 1993 Hardinge Cobra 65. Probably had 10k in repairs in 6 months, and was replaced with a new Smart lathe shortly after. He did pick up a 1998 Amera-seiki lathe for 6000 a few months before that had less than 700 hours on it. That machine worked great, outperforming our newer lathes. But repairs were expensive, and probably had 5k in a year in repairs. Sold them together for 12k, and they were refurbished and sent to South America. I wouldn't buy anything old that doesn't have a USB port, I kinda feel like that's the line. Our 2006 HAAS VF-3 is probably the most reliable machine at the shop, it doesn't perform like our newer UMC or VF2 but, it's a tank. And has the option for a "door hold override". The new machines don't have that lol.
I have seen several machines scrapped in two decades as a machinist. Repair costs often exceed the value of the machine, and old machines are less productive. Lower spindle speeds, rapid speeds, machining speeds. We've scrapped two in the last few years at my current employer. One was a pretty nice machine in the 1980s when it was new. A board failed and it would have cost more to uave the board repaired than what the machine would have sold for if it was running. It was also incredibly slow. I think max rapid on it was 400IPM. Spindle speed topped out at 4000 rpm. It was okd enough to have a physical tape reader, and we were never able to get it to communicate via RS232. I almost forgot, it also had a yellow top motor. Programs had to be typed in by hand. Old, slow, and frankly junk by any reasonable standard. The second was a decade or so newer, but the ways were worn out, the ballscrews were worn, the spindle bearings were shot, and it was also slow. Neither of those machines, or any other I've seen scrapped, was anything anyone would want. If you want to make money, you don't buy worn out garbage that requires constant repair. You buy something that runs, cuts accurately and precisely, and will do so repeatedly.
A couple of decades ago, the manufacturers started embedding PCs in their electronic measuring devices, the expensive ones. Imagine investing 100k€ on a device that has very long technical lifespan, is precise and then the user inteface software runs win95 along with some esoteric interface module to connect with the signal lines, gets no OS upgrades and boots up from a spinning disk. Better have short ROI calculated for that one.
I had two excello 605's given to me last year. cost me 3500 to move them. 600 to do the wiring mods to convert from 600vac, and replace the motor with a phase converted 208vac motor. I am an old electronics technician/industrial electrician so it's just a hobby and i have all schematics and manuals but man..... if I had to pay me to do this just to have an 80's machine. No way.
I was at a scrap yard years back and someone brought in a large Genie lift. I called friends and the friends bought it from the guy before it was scrapped. The machine looked closer to new than something deserving scrap. Electronics issue. Only my friends called the company and the guy who designed the electronics happen to take the call. Walked them through the repair. Imagine....they basically lucked out and got you on the phone. Very impressive what people like you know and do.
I'm currently going through the transition of what I should have done to what I have already done ??? I didn't so much buy a heap of junk. I purchased an old 1990 model Mazak QT15, which in my eyes is still an excellent machine to have in any shop today. Those who own them rarely want to part with them. For this reason Very difficult machines to find for sale. Unfortunately, it was run like most machines that were planned to be replaced. Lots of small parts missing or broken, and it was showing its age. Like so many guys I didn't really have the money to buy anything new, or I basically couldn't justify buying anything new with the amount of work I was doing at that time. I started fixing it up with thoughts of a good tidy up. As time went on, I became a little too obsessed with the idea of having an old but a very tidy machine. I finished up completely stripping the whole machine with the thoughts that I could never have a new machine, so why not have an older Very tidy machine. As time went on, I became more busy and spent less time trying to finish with the rebuilding the machine. Now it was becoming very frustrating that all my turning work could only be done on my Manual Lathe. Frustrated by the time it was taking to complete jobs and be cost effective with my prices ??? While all this was happening, my Mazak Mission as I call it, sat there not running ??? and continuously reminding me that it wasn't running 😡 Thankfully, years later, I was in a position to finally justify buying a new CNC Lathe. Now I just need time to finish my Mazak Mission. Long story. But, not as long as it has taken to complete my Mazak Mission. Definitely interesting to do. But, very time consuming. I guess I was thinking too much like a poor person who could never see myself with a new machine ??? IF anyone is interested I have posted a fair few videos of some of the work I have completed so far. Eventually 1 day when it's running. I plan to sell a very nice Mazak CNC Lathe. One of those moments in life when you're wiser after the fact 🙂👍
@@Dancing_Alone_wRentals Thanks for taking the time to read my story. I must admit I did get a little caught up in the moment and pretty much told my whole Mission story 😅 But, it has been an interesting project 🙂👍
i think the old green matsuura you talked about was in a video from a channel called prestige manufacturing just uploaded a day ago. bragging about buying it for 350$ 😅. in the video it looked like a great deal but he never mentioned anything about the 45 tapper
45 Taper tooling is around and if you have patience it's damn near free at most auctions. Monarch tools often used them so if there are old Monarchs in an auction catalog thats where you want to go hunting.
That was a different machine (or two). I happen to be in a shop where we have an identical machine to one he bought, and previously had a very similar one to the other he bought. Both are 40-taper. We also have a 1998 Matsuura MAM700-HF horizontal that does have a 45 taper spindle. Thankfully we bought a couple hundred tool holders for it at auction at one point. It's a rare taper at this point and when we get rid of the machine they'll all go with it. We also have a Hitachi Seiki VS-40 in the shop. DMG-Mori is some help with parts and service since they bought all the intellectual property of HS but they're all getting old too.
I thought t was the same exact machine however, the one in the PM vid has a yellow stenciled X axis direction on the right hand shield ( Look below the control panel ) . The one it this vid does not.
If the issue is ever the computer being broken and being too old to repair, keep in mind that there's an entire community of vintage computer enthusiasts who collect, repair, and restore vintage computers, many of whom are also electronic or computer engineers, and have the skills necessary to fix vintage electronics.
I've have a CNC mill that's getting scrapped because we destroyed it using it as a refractory grinder... yeah running straight water and using diamond wheels is a terribly hard on a machine. But the customer gladly paid me for it and so I destroyed it. Could I repair it, sure, but the cost of parts would be way more that a good condition used machine so that would be silly. And we salvaged a pile of parts off of it, heck the local dealer came down and took a bunch of parts of it and pay me a bit for them so win win. Also you will get some cash for the scrap metal so buy the time you add up the numbers a lot of the time it's not worth fixing up old machines unless it's just for fun.
So there is a market that is overlooked. Machine tools are not evenly spread across the country, they are in pockets. So here is the game. Buy the machines for the cheap scrap price, the mixed metal or even the mixed material price. I myself in say the Los Angeles market would pay 7 cents a pound. Then load them onto rail cars and take them to medium (100K) hub cities in the Midwest. Most of those, even more so in the southern reaches, never had a major machine working tradition and so they don't have lots of machines sitting around. So say that 70K monster as an example, you pay 70,000 x0.07 for a total of $490. For shipping, buy a flatbed trailer, load the machine on the flatbed and load that on a train car. Then ship it to the Midwest. Total cost to this point, less than 3K excluding the trailer, which you can either keep for the next load or sell to get your money back. You now have a functional huge CNC machine in a Midwest city, where you can easily sell it for 5 to 10K.
The time and cost involved in retrofitting controls almost never pencils out in a business. Garage hobbyshop maybe. We recently sent 2 1983 vintage Mori's to the yard. They were slow, lacked memory and were too small. The new machine puts out more parts than the 2 Mori's combined.
It breaks my heart to see these old monsters go to the grave but its for the best! Theres only so many bandaids you can put on a failing machine :'( Great video as always love to see them in my feed!!!
Really needs to be a 3rd party company that sells plug in place control and electrical systems for old machines.. basically keep the motors but get rid of the old electrical.
You are missing the very odd variable of very cheap bastards. Unfortunately I have come across a few shops and they refuse to get rid of a 1995 NC mill or a 1979 tape feed converted to floppy disk so we keep a 1990s pc to transfer programs to it😅
The bigger the machine, the lower the purchase price will be relative to what it cost when new. Think of a large excavator / backhoe compared to a mini. Few can use an older large excavator but every retired guy could deal with a mini to go scratch in the dirt.
When things were all manual, the stuff that came out of the best shops went to the next ones down and so on until all but the largest got to people's homes - more people engineering back then both for work and their hobbies or side gigs. The nature of CNC means that hand-me-down is mostly not viable. It's killed the pipeline which supplied the next generation. Also in turn means less people can fix stuff so it's too expensive so things get thrown away and a new one bought. CNC might be more efficient for knocking out a batch of 50k parts, but it's come at the cost of more sustainable economic models with engineering more distributed around local small shops developing.
I've seen machines die when the machinist retired . No one wants to go crazy by learning 10's of problems of a machine... problems that you know ..normally should not be there . The problem with the old iron , and godamm some were build like tanks , thick af. casting , thick af leadscrew , larger bearings , motors that were oversized - and could run nnon stop without overheating . The machines could generally take more beating , the sheetmetal was 2-3X the thickness of todays ....list goes on . Imy experience NO ONE cares enough to do a proper repair , or if that's not possible , than a complete rebuild overhaul-with new servos, bearings , leadscrews , fully new electricals . Basically to keep the casting , sheetmetal , and maybe a few other mechanincal components . Instead of investing , they just kick a 20-30 sometimes 40 year old machines till it can't even interpolate , e-stops stop working , servo breaks stop working , you have to actuate realys by hand , aswell as position sensors , oils start leaking really bad , bearing noises , loss of power , loss of position , shaky axis movement , broken keys , hideous coolant tanks , and a handful of botched and dangerous repairs . The use it "till it completely breaks" mentality" ps: with lots of downtime and scrapped parts .
I would make it a car trailer Rip all the electronics out and make it plug n play Make parts with it and fix it myself Old machines seem best 👌 The quality of parts so much better since the design was less reliable
You can't make a good living off of old machines that you can't fix, that you can't get parts for. Retrofits are just not worth it. Too much trouble for almost all people.
Yes, old cnc machines. Scrap. Older, manual machines? Don't scrap. If youre a digitard, you can put digitard boxes and controls on them just fine. They're actually built to be maintained tho, so they're way better machines to begin with.
start making cold calls to all local machine shops to see if they have anything they would part with. You would be surprised how many are out there. Also guys on the practical machinist forums are not getting younger and most have a machine they don't use as much as they should and would like to pass it on...
