Hi John, I'm a Brother person too. They float my boat, friggin awesome. I have worked on Makino and Mattsuura and even an older Hitachi Seiki. I did work(sold CNC machines) for the distributors of Mori Seiki when the original MV40 VMC came onto the market(now thats a long time ago). Visited the Makino factories too a few years ago and it was agreat experience. You would love it. These days I'm a Okuma fan(big time). I nearly bought a 15 Y.O MX45 that had been traded in. It was from an Okuma distributor. Had a rebuilt spindle, and i asked him how accurate could I expect it's positioning to be, you know wear and tear. 15 years of production I said. He looked at me, smiled and simply said "same as new". Okuma's don't wear slideways or ball screw assemblies. Your Mori Will last forever and then some. congratulations on a great machine.
Hi John, I had a bit of a look at my own machine (Bridgeport GX480) it also doesn't have the flush but it has the button for it. I had a look in the back and mine appears to be fully wired and ready, there is a relay alongside the main coolant relays and this is wired to a socket on the back of the machine next to sockets that take power to the main coolant pump and conveyor/auger motor (I have an auger). On the coolant tank there is space for a second coolant pump and I think this is what is used for the chip flushing. Of course your machine is likely to be completely different however more than worth a good survey of the rear of the machine, possibly listen for a relay click while someone pushes the button.
It's just amazing to me to think that you and a few of the other guys on here have these giant machines for the businesses you started, yet started out on an X2 mini mill.
You need to get the generic documentation for the controller, there is probably an IO board to which you could attach the required relay. The machine I just got has a Siemens controls and I managed to download enough documentation to allow me to add a probe and other options.
1st CNC Lathe I programed was a Mori Seki TL-5/ Fanuc, way back in 1985 . It even had a Tape Drive !!!! (never used) That Machine is still working today in 2022, 37 years later !!!!
The relays for the wash gun are listed in your electronics manual; their name is somewhat vague, but they're there. You can also just install a T & ball valve off of the main coolant output, but then you run the risk of forgetting to flip the ball valve back and starving your tool of coolant. Or, I think the coolant gun option is only like $3,000 :)
Hi John, You didn't talk about the Probe and Tool setting I have The Renishaw Wireless probe and tool setter on my HAAS and really love it. It makes setup a breeze and is really accurate. It has many other features that you can incorporate into your programs that also make like easier. I am sure you guys will love your new machine. John
+helicopterjohns good idea for a vid! I absolutely love the probing system! And i do incorporate it into my codes. Automatic probing, tool breakage, wear offsets, etc. Fun stuff.
Heck yes! Great video for anyone considering the next big step. Also, I would LOVE to see a video outlining the long term plans you mention! Don't feel the need to present us with a 'business plan' per-se, but I think like a lot of us would love to hear some of the ideas bouncing around in your head on the subject.
Never got to play with them but at my old work we had a few MORI machines like that in the milling department. Hell most of the shop was mori based from bar feeds to mills. My current work is based with HAZZ machines and while you can see the cheapness in allot of them, I prefer them mainly because of the nice setups and the fact I can switch from a lathe to a mill and the controls are all the same give or take.
I love seeing you starting your own business especially with such an high-end product. I work as salesman at an machine tool manufacturer in germany, we built high-end drilling machines (column, radial etc.) and the market is very though in the non cnc-machine tool business. My thoughts are the same as yours, you should really be confident with your choice of machine, otherwise you will constantly think "what if...". I got many customers from the mould- and toolmaking industry, that want to built high-end products with a price expectation of a chinese or used machine. But if you buy one of these you shouldn't expect to make your products the next 20 years with the machine and than give it in cash, because thats not going to happen. Something to 12:00 : What i learned over the years is that ppl that come in with shorts and more casual are often the ones who will buy the machine and/or have more knowledge. The "suit-guys" are often the purchasers of middle sized and big company's that buy the super cheap machines or come to get something for free.
I ran a 30+ year old mori seiki lathe than still ran as good if not better than all the new HAAS', mazaks and anything else in the shop. Been crashed plenty of times over it's life and still held .0005 tolerances without any problem. As far as the coolant gun, you could do what I did. My lathe did not have that option, so I took a hard rubber/plastic hose and put a coolant coupler on both ends, then just hooked it up to whatever tool I was on, hit coolant on(M8) and washed her down.
Very interesting grind once again. You mentioned that Eric's been thinking about starting a TH-cam-channel some grinds ago and I'd just like to share that I've been thinking that this would be great ever since I saw him the first time on knifemaking tuesday. Would love to watch that.
+rontz great to hear. I know he's been filming thoughts to get used to the idea of talking to the camera but he hasn't uploaded anything. But sure if he will haha.
I wonder why you have only 2 vises on a 40x20 machine. I'd have a big sub-plate on that table with a bunch of fixture plates, for the kind of work you do. Or 5 vises...
Love my Brother Speedio 700. After looking at Tormach, I knew that I would appreciate the extra speed and power that the Brother provided, and none of my parts required the huge hogging cuts that an Okuma or Mori could produce. Also, I didn't have a slab or door clearance to move in a huge machine.
How thick of concrete do you need for that machine? An old place I use to work at had 36" thick pad poured for a giant DeVlieg milling machine. The thing is was pretty damn big. Milled/drilled side frames for envelope machines.
+littlestworkshop Yeah, I get it. I've seen so many different versions of the ball valve to garden hose method and it saddens me to see it. You bought the best machine in the industry for a reason. The factory option will use high quality materials and integrate correctly, so as to not cause any other issues.
You can do it yourself and use high quality parts and materials and integrate it correctly, DIY does not mean it has to be a manual ball valve, he was specifically talking about using the panel control. It's a convenience and not something that is going to make money do being frugal seems reasonable to me, he paid the big money for the big iron that does the real work.
The shop I work for we have 13 mori NV4500 and 6 NL 1500 plus other odd machines, we are a production shop and we are in the medical micro machining game, the mori's run 24hrs a day 5 days straight for over 10 years now, we have about 20 diff operators including my self so needless to say they have been crashed and abused but mori's don't care they hold tenths all week, congrats on your machine.
A very good presentation. It seems that the sophisticated machine will do more pleasing works for your customers than do a full utilization of its capabilities in your actual works. Recall back the of year 87' when I just came out school and worked in a factory. My boss was persuaded by a salesman and bought a Japanese Ramcon 3TC; a NC machine with a digitizing stylus head. The price at that time was almost similar as that of yours. Salesman boosted that the machine liked 'A hen that can continually lay the golden eggs??'.I still keep the machine catalogs.... Great machine will change in time, motor, mechanical method, electronic, computer software.....
stainless and titanium might be worth it, saved up, depending on the current prices. Otherwise, they're just recycled and you might get lunch money :) There's money in scrap carbide though. That fluctuates around 8-10 bucks per pound
Hey Grimsmo, im an amateur cnc machinist and I use to program and maintain laser cutting tables for a company I worked for. one of the guys taught me a little bit of autodesk and solidworks while I was there. What smaller cnc mills would you recommend for a garage hobbyist knife maker? Any advice would be helpful and money is not an issue.
I've own and run a knife company specializing in fixed blades. Do you think the tormach would be a good fit for me if I choose to convert some of my methods to CNC? If not, what kind of machine would you recommend?
If i'm not mistaken wash gun is going to be an $$$$ option. I don't think you can hack it. What you can do is just through a Y on your flood coolant pump and use a standard rubber water discharge hose (NOT a plastic garden hose, the coolant will destroy it) and spray gun. you can then just turn the coolant on and wash away. If your coolant won't run without the door closed then you have another problem. Also you can just build/buy a wash down tool that is just 90° nozzle that uses the through spindle coolant to wash the inside of the machine. You just turn on the coolant and run the spindle at a few RPM and it washes itself. I built one with a from some 3/8" SS tube bent to 90° that was in a side lock holder, I had a program the ran the spindle at 10 rpm for a few minutes with the spindle at home. I made another tube that was bent to about 10° that I could use to wash of the table and parts. I just made a subroutine that call the wash down tool and ran the table in a pattern with the coolant and spindle running. Works awesome and you don't spray yourself with coolant.
Really, you don't have TSC? You really should have that. Even if you just have collets and not through coolant tools the coolant delivery is so much better than flood. Not to mention that I pushes chip away from the tool not toward the tool. Plus then you can build a washdown tool. Win Win!
It's not even bad if you fill only one of those buckets per day. Depends on what kind of parts i am machining at the time, the record is about three of those buckets in one 8 hour shift. The % of removed material on those parts wasn't that much but they were decent size.
+Bradley Galloway no, not irresponsible. But at the time that was way too big of a jump for me to consider, both financially and mentally, coming from my tiny X2. Mini mills seem to routinely go for $25k for a 10yr old used one, and they're great machines.
Awesome machine and videos. I think the thing to really think about is that you were making great knives already with a Tormach. Just about any VMC out there would do a better job than a Tormach. I personally would have gone for a cheaper and smaller haas machine and not worry too much about the other future plans. if the machine couldn't keep up it would be a good problem to have really and you could add another machine.
John, did you lease the Mori to own? So at the end of 5 years, you own it or do you turn it back in and upgrade at the end of the lease? $3800 a month over 5 years is a chunk of change to then just return it.
My problem with the brothers is the lack of RPM. I think if you are primarily working with small and tiny tools max rpm is the number one factor if you really want to be efficient. I would love a Mori with 40-50k RPM but dang they are $300k. Going to the flag day sale June 14th at the local Haas HFO, if there's a deal to be had, I might just have to pull the trigger.
Fischer977 Yes I have seem them, but there are too many limitations not including the price. I think your better off getting the right machine for the job in the first place. Those seem like a good stop gap for prototyping or a small feature on an otherwise large part ect. In my case I would have to get 3-4 of those things, it just wouldn't make sense, for me.
bensbenz you are totaly right. the solution i suggested is a compromise for not buying a machine, for parts i saw in these videos ,a good used machine would do the work perfectly. i have 15 years old hitachi seki vs50's with 12,000 rpm spindles, which im using for complicated parts and even molds components, in the price of one new mori you buy 4 older bridge type and 1 normal lathe
I took a different approach. Save your nickels....and buy a good used machine. I opted for a 2008 Okuma MC-V4020, which is a kick ass machine....and the payment is exactly $0/month. Very happy with the machine, and even happier with the payment. Financing cap ex puts a lot of new companies out of business. It creates a huge amount of pressure just to cover payments before you make dime one.
So your spend is roughly 10x the cost of Tormach. Did you do a numbers only business plan on this machine. Because it sounded like you made a "gut first" type of decision. Sometimes that is needed but its always worth doing the numbers only conversation just so you know what that looks like.
+gus bisbal there was definitely gut involved in this decision, but we did look at and consider all the numbers we could think of and thought about it for a looong time. Yes it's 10x the cost of the Tormach but it's 20x the machine.
A big machine like a Mori is great to have and the quality of work that you get from a serious machine like this is always going to to be far superior to likes of a Tormach. But of coarse i do not need to explain that, as you are already aware of that. But and a Big But, these machines are built for serious machining, for hogging off large sections of material at very high feed rates well above anything that you may encounter. It may not sound like it but I Am Very Happy for you that you stepped into a machine like this, but for half the money you could have got a similar machine that would have still exceeded your expectations even with future plans included. You also mentioned that you are leasing this machine. Not sure about your country but a lease is taken out over a Five Year term (as you mentioned) and at the end of it you can buy it outright or hand the machine back with nothing to pay. In say that i am not sure why you committed to such a large machine when you could have updated later if needed. Great machine to have but way over kill for Dollars going out verses the Dollars coming in. My comments are to Educate Not to be Insulting. Thank You Very much for your video is good that you have been able to grow your business to this point and i do wish you all the very best for the future. Regards Peter.
John, love the vids, and appreciate the perspective...but it's pretty quiet there. "If the spindle's not turning, you ain't earning!" I know the owner of a local fab business. They've been in business for 40 years, have 80+ employees, and a bunch of really cool machines...so they are doing many things right. They keep the machines busy as much of the day as possible...even lights off. They load up pallets at night and on Fridays, and the machines self load as they finish parts. The point is that the.cost clock is always running, but you only make income from finishing parts and time is a fixed commodity. The less time you waste, the more money you can make. Every minute of stopped machine is money you'll never ever see. I understand about not batching prototype parts, but I'd think at this point you are in production mode on some things, not prototyping mode. You might want to consider versioning parts, and not change production designs all the time. Just an idea. -- Mike
+BigMjolnir great thought Mike, thanks. I know that's where we need to be, it's just hard to beat the prototype mentality out of my head and get into production mode.
+JohnGrimsmo John, you've said you enjoy the problem solving aspects the most, so "production mode", where things are locked down and fixed wouldn't be very attractive to you. You've also said that Erik (did I guess the spelling right?) enjoys turning out good parts. Maybe you could give production to Erik, and you handle R&D? Once you get a design you consider "good enough", you give it a version number and turn it over to Erik to produce, while you start on the next design. If production turns up issues with a previous design, you work out changes, increment the version, and move to production. You and Erik coordinate moving things from design to production between yourselves with a semi-formal procedUre. So your twiddling the design doesn't interfere with production. The Mori is for production and final design testing, and the Tormach is for R&D. The main idea is to "batch" the tweaks, rather than tossing them in continually and disrupting production. What do you think? -- Mike
Hey John, loving the videos. I subbed about 6 months ago and have been working through your videos and they are great!. I am 17 and looking to start my own gunsmithing business in the future. I already have a nice lathe and a shitty G0704 grizzly milling machine but i really need a cnc mill with 4th axis to flute barrels and bolts and such. There is a used 2013 haas tm-2p with only 1000 hours on it for sale on ebay that has caught my eye. Ive never run cnc nor do i have anyone to teach me but i think i can teach myself. I dont need a cnc mill that has a ton of power and rigidity to make big huge cuts i just need one that is extremely accurate and can hold .0002-.0003" tolerance. I wouldnt be opposed to a tormach if they can hold that kind of accuracy. Any advice? I still have one year of high school left and a couple years for a business degree at college but id like to know what im doing and have experience before i open my business for real and start to take on work. Thanks!
+Longrangehunter the Tormach will struggle with those tolerances, that's the kind of tightness I'm working with now. The Haas should do well! But don't rush into it, do your research,put in the work, and have fun with it!
See hugging the Mori is good for morale. :-) Was talking to a guy this morning that works at a company with a 5 axis Mori with like a 10ft table and a 12K spindle, just a mere 14million USD. The payments on that one....... glad its not me!!
They paid cash for it;) and the machine itself was around $8mil and the rest was all support, custom tooling, custom coolant cleaning system and upgraded 15k spindle. But ya, it was a $14 million package. It even came with a Delcam senior tech guy that we hired on full time, lol he is getting his green card now. The crazy thing is, they project it will pay for itself in 4.5 yrs.
JohnGrimsmo I like seeing the little 1/32 endmills doing their thing just as much as the 15" facemills. We have to have big parts and small parts and somebody has to make them/repair them and I enjoy seeing it either way, it is all just machining regardless of size. :-)
I can imagine pathpilot running quicker because it's linux, the controller I have built runs a asrock a55m-hvs with an apu ( built in graphic Co processor ) 8 gb for ram is over clocked to 3.2 gigs its a 64 bit machine and an 120gb ssd hard drive, in short windows 10 boots in about 40 seconds it a large tower so all cnc drives, breakout breakout boards ( just started wiring second one ) and power supplies are in the tower, a 36v for the three stepper drives and motors nema 34's, 12v for proxity home switches and 5v for breakout boards and voltage displays, the uccnc 300 can run 5 parrallel ports at once which means when I build an atc, 4th or 5th axis I will be well setup, the reason for the quick pc I to run fusion 360 on the controller so no running back and forward to edit g code, it's been about a five year build but I feel worth the spare time put into it, I am designing a atc like the one on umc 20 by dave decassin, it's a drum style changer and should hold about 20 tools I hope when finished and I plan to post the plans on grab cad, again thank you for taking the time to rely as I know you guys are always busy, thanks daniel
I think you have a good video channel. Would you comment on 1, whether your TH-cam channel created your success in knife sales or did your knife sales create the TH-cam popularity. Secondly, IMHO it is mind boggling that a pocket knife can sell for as much as it does! Congratulations on your business model. Jerry Halcomb
wow this video is like send from heaven.. lol.. i have my little small cnc shop that i run daily and my mill is struggeling alot so i am looking at buying a new dmg mori but i am alittle hessitant. :p
You know John, I have followed you guys for a long time, but your opinions on the Mori are totally skewed, that DuraVertical is not speced any better than a Haas, actually if you look at a ball bar plot vs a Haas, Haas runs theirs at 100ipm, the Mori runs theirs at 20ipm to get similar results, and also is true for their new Eco mill and CMX Mills, they use smaller ballscrews, LM guides etc. Frankly you should have had each builder test cut your parts, and the thing is you could have bought a machine for less money with more options that would make you more money. Also, you should really add a Midaco pallet changer to help with your through-put, and mori sells those for $89k with a DDR, I can send you quotes some of my customers have gotten from the mori guys. Just wanted to add my thoughts, thanks for the podcast, love it!
They are but it is scary when you are that close the purchase, the machine will be paid off in 5 and after that they can keep it for 20+ years making good parts. They could also sell it in 7-10 years and purchase another almost new machine while the machine still has lots of value so they could still have reliability and lack of wear on a newer machine. You have to take risks in any business in order to grow, in a machine shop purchasing an expensive machine can make or break the company, I have been to auctions where a company went under because they invested heavily in machines just to lose contracts months later and go under. Their risk on this is manageable, the numbers he talked about are not bad at all.
I think he's just being thorough that's all. Justifying a price tag on some other machine that is only $50,000 less would still require just as much nerves to explain why you bought it, and wondering if you can pay it off. Also, they mentioned long term goals, buying in the moment simply due to price results in a cheap machine and cheaply made parts. I figured they are doing something more than just knives. Good to branch out. They also wouldn't have bought this if previous income history couldn't project a 5 year payment plan to pay for it, and if you don't see 5 years of income coming, then it doesn't really matter what the price was, and you're still just as fucked. The only thing thing these guys have really lost is mostly personal income to purchase frivolous shit. At first they were happily chugging along with a satisfactory "money in, money out" with the Tormach, and now things are scaled up with the Mori. Keeping things full tilt in re-investment I see. I say it's all good. I have nothing to do with this machine, and I by myself is already confident enough for them that they'll be here, proving everybody wrong in 10-15 years with another video why they bought a million dollar machine. ;)
Haas is a decent machine but you get raped when there are repairs to be done(at least where I am). We have a couple great service techs we use when we can't fix it ourselves, but with Haas they don't like to share technical info so you end up paying thru the nose to use their tech guys. If you plan on holding onto a machine for many years don't forget the service side of things! I'm jealous...I wish we had a Mori! Thanks for sharing.
We have a Mori lathe at work. When it's going it's not a bad machine but when we run into a problem Mori support doesn't want to know us. Their after sale service sucks ass! In Australia anyways, might be different in other countries. That's why we went for Mazak. We now have 6 Mazaks and 1 Mori. lol!
hi guys, i love the video's but why are people complaining so much about mach 3 cnc, i use mach 3 cnc at home and find it ok, yes it has its problems but a lot of the youtube cnc guys all started on mach 3 cnc and got to where they are now using it true ??, i feel maybe its about making parts when all said and done, not how good the next greatest machine is, you cant compare a $150,000 cnc machine to a £20,000 can you ?? if it was me a would have 3 to 7 cnc machines that way you can make more parts at the same time ?? please let me know wot you think ok, thanks daniel
+Daniel Kitson you're right, i spent many years on mach 3 and understood it well. But it wasn't until i started using another system, Fanuc and PathPilot, that I realized how many freaking headaches Mach was giving me. It would glitch out. It would lose offsets for no reason. I had to have systems upon systems just to be able to make good parts, sometimes. When machining becomes a business not a hobby that's when the problems and issues go from being fun challenges to progress crushing headaches.
Thanks for the quick rely guys, So you think pathpilot is better ?? I number of people are hacking it i believe to run on no tormach machine because tormach won't release it to none tormach owner, I have tried the old linuxcnc when it was emc2 I liked it, but to add stuff was hard work if your not a programmer, I run a g0704 cnc at home on a uccnc300 usb board and mach 3 cnc with some custom Macro's with no issues because the uccnc card is directly driving the Mill, I believe this is similar to the Mennsa card on path pilot ??, I can see your point for running a industrial CNC machine but only if it's making good money, I have a friend I work with at times with a few million pounds sterling ( i am in the uk ) of cnc machine including a 9 axis Morri Siemens cnc milling machine, he makes £30,000 of parts a week so the money in his machines I can see, but waking up on a monday morning knowing I had to make that sort of money would scary me to death, I think the point I was trying to make was yes mach 3 cnc has it place in the cnc world as it's a big world, I just like to see anyone seaming to be get run down I hope you see my point and please keep the video's coming, thanks daniel
+Daniel Kitson the usb board you're running is a huge addition to Mach, I'm assuming it's similar to the Smooth Stepper. I always wanted to do that. Path Pilot does seem to be a lot better, but it handles everything differently so it can be very weird for the advanced stuff for a mach guy to switch over
When it comes to tools. there's no such thing as overbuying as long as the cash flow/profit is there and you're smart enough to be able to use it. It's expensive and irresponsible to buy machines that are too small and can't keep up with the business growth as well.
I have run Mori's and Haas and others, I like Haas they are "smarter" in a way or easier to use, however Mori is a WAY better built machine. Nobody wants to crash, but it happens and Haas machines are fragile compared to Mori. Just my 2 cents, either way make chips and make $.
Hi John, I'm a Brother person too. They float my boat, friggin awesome. I have worked on Makino and Mattsuura and even an older Hitachi Seiki. I did work(sold CNC machines) for the distributors of Mori Seiki when the original MV40 VMC came onto the market(now thats a long time ago). Visited the Makino factories too a few years ago and it was agreat experience. You would love it. These days I'm a Okuma fan(big time). I nearly bought a 15 Y.O MX45 that had been traded in. It was from an Okuma distributor. Had a rebuilt spindle, and i asked him how accurate could I expect it's positioning to be, you know wear and tear. 15 years of production I said. He looked at me, smiled and simply said "same as new". Okuma's don't wear slideways or ball screw assemblies.
Your Mori Will last forever and then some. congratulations on a great machine.
Hi John,
I had a bit of a look at my own machine (Bridgeport GX480) it also doesn't have the flush but it has the button for it. I had a look in the back and mine appears to be fully wired and ready, there is a relay alongside the main coolant relays and this is wired to a socket on the back of the machine next to sockets that take power to the main coolant pump and conveyor/auger motor (I have an auger). On the coolant tank there is space for a second coolant pump and I think this is what is used for the chip flushing. Of course your machine is likely to be completely different however more than worth a good survey of the rear of the machine, possibly listen for a relay click while someone pushes the button.
It's just amazing to me to think that you and a few of the other guys on here have these giant machines for the businesses you started, yet started out on an X2 mini mill.
You need to get the generic documentation for the controller, there is probably an IO board to which you could attach the required relay. The machine I just got has a Siemens controls and I managed to download enough documentation to allow me to add a probe and other options.
1st CNC Lathe I programed was a Mori Seki TL-5/ Fanuc, way back in 1985 . It even had a Tape Drive !!!! (never used)
That Machine is still working today in 2022, 37 years later !!!!
Finally someone who puts the price out there. Usually the comment section is filled with folks asking "how much?"
The relays for the wash gun are listed in your electronics manual; their name is somewhat vague, but they're there. You can also just install a T & ball valve off of the main coolant output, but then you run the risk of forgetting to flip the ball valve back and starving your tool of coolant. Or, I think the coolant gun option is only like $3,000 :)
That's all we do at work as well. Just tap into the main coolant outlet. ;)
Hi John,
You didn't talk about the Probe and Tool setting I have The Renishaw Wireless probe and tool setter on my HAAS and really love it. It makes setup a breeze and is really accurate. It has many other features that you can incorporate into your programs that also make like easier.
I am sure you guys will love your new machine.
John
+helicopterjohns good idea for a vid! I absolutely love the probing system! And i do incorporate it into my codes. Automatic probing, tool breakage, wear offsets, etc. Fun stuff.
Heck yes! Great video for anyone considering the next big step. Also, I would LOVE to see a video outlining the long term plans you mention! Don't feel the need to present us with a 'business plan' per-se, but I think like a lot of us would love to hear some of the ideas bouncing around in your head on the subject.
+jonathon friedl honestly i don't have a ton of long term ideas, i just know that they will come.
Thanks for the insight John, glad you are happy with your purchase!
Lovely machine, and great inside scoop on why you got that mori.
Never got to play with them but at my old work we had a few MORI machines like that in the milling department. Hell most of the shop was mori based from bar feeds to mills. My current work is based with HAZZ machines and while you can see the cheapness in allot of them, I prefer them mainly because of the nice setups and the fact I can switch from a lathe to a mill and the controls are all the same give or take.
Great Video how long did it take to go from Mach 3 to this control system this is my freight looking at jumping from mack 3 to fanuc control
I love seeing you starting your own business especially with such an high-end product. I work as salesman at an machine tool manufacturer in germany, we built high-end drilling machines (column, radial etc.) and the market is very though in the non cnc-machine tool business. My thoughts are the same as yours, you should really be confident with your choice of machine, otherwise you will constantly think "what if...". I got many customers from the mould- and toolmaking industry, that want to built high-end products with a price expectation of a chinese or used machine. But if you buy one of these you shouldn't expect to make your products the next 20 years with the machine and than give it in cash, because thats not going to happen.
Something to 12:00 : What i learned over the years is that ppl that come in with shorts and more casual are often the ones who will buy the machine and/or have more knowledge. The "suit-guys" are often the purchasers of middle sized and big company's that buy the super cheap machines or come to get something for free.
I ran a 30+ year old mori seiki lathe than still ran as good if not better than all the new HAAS', mazaks and anything else in the shop. Been crashed plenty of times over it's life and still held .0005 tolerances without any problem.
As far as the coolant gun, you could do what I did. My lathe did not have that option, so I took a hard rubber/plastic hose and put a coolant coupler on both ends, then just hooked it up to whatever tool I was on, hit coolant on(M8) and washed her down.
Very interesting grind once again. You mentioned that Eric's been thinking about starting a TH-cam-channel some grinds ago and I'd just like to share that I've been thinking that this would be great ever since I saw him the first time on knifemaking tuesday. Would love to watch that.
+rontz great to hear. I know he's been filming thoughts to get used to the idea of talking to the camera but he hasn't uploaded anything. But sure if he will haha.
I wonder why you have only 2 vises on a 40x20 machine. I'd have a big sub-plate on that table with a bunch of fixture plates, for the kind of work you do. Or 5 vises...
+eformance I'm working up to it. 5 vises will happen when I can afford it.
Love my Brother Speedio 700. After looking at Tormach, I knew that I would appreciate the extra speed and power that the Brother provided, and none of my parts required the huge hogging cuts that an Okuma or Mori could produce. Also, I didn't have a slab or door clearance to move in a huge machine.
+HenryHolsters yeah I know you love yours. It's in a whole different world than the Tormach.
have you just compared speedio to tormach?
How thick of concrete do you need for that machine? An old place I use to work at had 36" thick pad poured for a giant DeVlieg milling machine. The thing is was pretty damn big. Milled/drilled side frames for envelope machines.
The gun button operates a valve that shifts flood coolant to the gun. Your salesman can give you pricing on adding the option.
He wants to add it himself to avoid $$$
+littlestworkshop Yeah, I get it. I've seen so many different versions of the ball valve to garden hose method and it saddens me to see it. You bought the best machine in the industry for a reason. The factory option will use high quality materials and integrate correctly, so as to not cause any other issues.
You can do it yourself and use high quality parts and materials and integrate it correctly, DIY does not mean it has to be a manual ball valve, he was specifically talking about using the panel control. It's a convenience and not something that is going to make money do being frugal seems reasonable to me, he paid the big money for the big iron that does the real work.
The shop I work for we have 13 mori NV4500 and 6 NL 1500 plus other odd machines, we are a production shop and we are in the medical micro machining game, the mori's run 24hrs a day 5 days straight for over 10 years now, we have about 20 diff operators including my self so needless to say they have been crashed and abused but mori's don't care they hold tenths all week, congrats on your machine.
A very good presentation. It seems that the sophisticated machine will do more pleasing works for your customers than do a full utilization of its capabilities in your actual works. Recall back the of year 87' when I just came out school and worked in a factory. My boss was persuaded by a salesman and bought a Japanese Ramcon 3TC; a NC machine with a digitizing stylus head. The price at that time was almost similar as that of yours. Salesman boosted that the machine liked 'A hen that can continually lay the golden eggs??'.I still keep the machine catalogs.... Great machine will change in time, motor, mechanical method, electronic, computer software.....
how many years a workshop takes to pay such a machine?
Interesting topic, thanks for sharing. What do you do with the chips? Can you sell the scrap metal with any meaningful $?
stainless and titanium might be worth it, saved up, depending on the current prices. Otherwise, they're just recycled and you might get lunch money :)
There's money in scrap carbide though. That fluctuates around 8-10 bucks per pound
Hey Grimsmo, im an amateur cnc machinist and I use to program and maintain laser cutting tables for a company I worked for. one of the guys taught me a little bit of autodesk and solidworks while I was there. What smaller cnc mills would you recommend for a garage hobbyist knife maker? Any advice would be helpful and money is not an issue.
I've own and run a knife company specializing in fixed blades. Do you think the tormach would be a good fit for me if I choose to convert some of my methods to CNC? If not, what kind of machine would you recommend?
If i'm not mistaken wash gun is going to be an $$$$ option. I don't think you can hack it. What you can do is just through a Y on your flood coolant pump and use a standard rubber water discharge hose (NOT a plastic garden hose, the coolant will destroy it) and spray gun. you can then just turn the coolant on and wash away. If your coolant won't run without the door closed then you have another problem. Also you can just build/buy a wash down tool that is just 90° nozzle that uses the through spindle coolant to wash the inside of the machine. You just turn on the coolant and run the spindle at a few RPM and it washes itself. I built one with a from some 3/8" SS tube bent to 90° that was in a side lock holder, I had a program the ran the spindle at 10 rpm for a few minutes with the spindle at home. I made another tube that was bent to about 10° that I could use to wash of the table and parts. I just made a subroutine that call the wash down tool and ran the table in a pattern with the coolant and spindle running. Works awesome and you don't spray yourself with coolant.
+Widget Works Manufacturing Inc. Wow I never thought about a wash down tool! I don't have through spindle though, but it is prepped for it.
Really, you don't have TSC? You really should have that. Even if you just have collets and not through coolant tools the coolant delivery is so much better than flood. Not to mention that I pushes chip away from the tool not toward the tool. Plus then you can build a washdown tool. Win Win!
It's not even bad if you fill only one of those buckets per day. Depends on what kind of parts i am machining at the time, the record is about three of those buckets in one 8 hour shift. The % of removed material on those parts wasn't that much but they were decent size.
Gun is the high pressure coolant system i think.
very interesting insight, thanks. One thing about Mach 3: it is much more convenient with a touchscreen !
+JohnGrimsmo A tougher question: Do you think it would have been irresponsible to buy a used Haas mini mill instead of the tormach (at that time)?
+Bradley Galloway no, not irresponsible. But at the time that was way too big of a jump for me to consider, both financially and mentally, coming from my tiny X2. Mini mills seem to routinely go for $25k for a 10yr old used one, and they're great machines.
Awesome machine and videos. I think the thing to really think about is that you were making great knives already with a Tormach. Just about any VMC out there would do a better job than a Tormach. I personally would have gone for a cheaper and smaller haas machine and not worry too much about the other future plans. if the machine couldn't keep up it would be a good problem to have really and you could add another machine.
John, did you lease the Mori to own? So at the end of 5 years, you own it or do you turn it back in and upgrade at the end of the lease? $3800 a month over 5 years is a chunk of change to then just return it.
+Jeff Trithart yes we will own it, there's a $1 buy out at the end.
Here's hoping you've got enough cash to buy it out then
Thanks for the info John! I'd be feeling much more lost without your help
I hear an echo.. weird :)
My problem with the brothers is the lack of RPM. I think if you are primarily working with small and tiny tools max rpm is the number one factor if you really want to be efficient. I would love a Mori with 40-50k RPM but dang they are $300k. Going to the flag day sale June 14th at the local Haas HFO, if there's a deal to be had, I might just have to pull the trigger.
On the plus side BT30 toolholders at 15k RPM don't need the same balance treatment as a CAT40 over 10k.
if you have through spindle coolant, buy yourself a typhoon from colibri spindles
Fischer977
Yes I have seem them, but there are too many limitations not including the price. I think your better off getting the right machine for the job in the first place. Those seem like a good stop gap for prototyping or a small feature on an otherwise large part ect. In my case I would have to get 3-4 of those things, it just wouldn't make sense, for me.
bensbenz you are totaly right. the solution i suggested is a compromise for not buying a machine, for parts i saw in these videos ,a good used machine would do the work perfectly. i have 15 years old hitachi seki vs50's with 12,000 rpm spindles, which im using for complicated parts and even molds components, in the price of one new mori you buy 4 older bridge type and 1 normal lathe
I took a different approach. Save your nickels....and buy a good used machine. I opted for a 2008 Okuma MC-V4020, which is a kick ass machine....and the payment is exactly $0/month. Very happy with the machine, and even happier with the payment. Financing cap ex puts a lot of new companies out of business. It creates a huge amount of pressure just to cover payments before you make dime one.
So your spend is roughly 10x the cost of Tormach. Did you do a numbers only business plan on this machine. Because it sounded like you made a "gut first" type of decision. Sometimes that is needed but its always worth doing the numbers only conversation just so you know what that looks like.
+gus bisbal there was definitely gut involved in this decision, but we did look at and consider all the numbers we could think of and thought about it for a looong time. Yes it's 10x the cost of the Tormach but it's 20x the machine.
The guy with the beard, reminds me of one of the Langmore brothers from Ozarks
Also its worth noting that there isn't ever a good price there is just a good salesman, have learned that the hard way.
Please please Eric ask us if we want fries or to super size it.
How is insurance on the machine?
It would be ridiculous to have that
A big machine like a Mori is great to have and the quality of work that you get from a serious machine like this is always going to to be far superior to likes of a Tormach.
But of coarse i do not need to explain that, as you are already aware of that.
But and a Big But, these machines are built for serious machining, for hogging off large sections of material at very high feed rates well above anything that you may encounter.
It may not sound like it but I Am Very Happy for you that you stepped into a machine like this, but for half the money you could have got a similar machine that would have still exceeded your expectations even with future plans included.
You also mentioned that you are leasing this machine.
Not sure about your country but a lease is taken out over a Five Year term (as you mentioned) and at the end of it you can buy it outright or hand the machine back with nothing to pay.
In say that i am not sure why you committed to such a large machine when you could have updated later if needed.
Great machine to have but way over kill for Dollars going out verses the Dollars coming in.
My comments are to Educate Not to be Insulting.
Thank You Very much for your video is good that you have been able to grow your business to this point and i do wish you all the very best for the future.
Regards Peter.
Man cave upgrade 2030?
John, love the vids, and appreciate the perspective...but it's pretty quiet there. "If the spindle's not turning, you ain't earning!"
I know the owner of a local fab business. They've been in business for 40 years, have 80+ employees, and a bunch of really cool machines...so they are doing many things right. They keep the machines busy as much of the day as possible...even lights off. They load up pallets at night and on Fridays, and the machines self load as they finish parts. The point is that the.cost clock is always running, but you only make income from finishing parts and time is a fixed commodity. The less time you waste, the more money you can make. Every minute of stopped machine is money you'll never ever see. I understand about not batching prototype parts, but I'd think at this point you are in production mode on some things, not prototyping mode. You might want to consider versioning parts, and not change production designs all the time. Just an idea.
-- Mike
+BigMjolnir great thought Mike, thanks. I know that's where we need to be, it's just hard to beat the prototype mentality out of my head and get into production mode.
+JohnGrimsmo John, you've said you enjoy the problem solving aspects the most, so "production mode", where things are locked down and fixed wouldn't be very attractive to you. You've also said that Erik (did I guess the spelling right?) enjoys turning out good parts. Maybe you could give production to Erik, and you handle R&D? Once you get a design you consider "good enough", you give it a version number and turn it over to Erik to produce, while you start on the next design. If production turns up issues with a previous design, you work out changes, increment the version, and move to production. You and Erik coordinate moving things from design to production between yourselves with a semi-formal procedUre. So your twiddling the design doesn't interfere with production. The Mori is for production and final design testing, and the Tormach is for R&D. The main idea is to "batch" the tweaks, rather than tossing them in continually and disrupting production. What do you think?
-- Mike
Wow.....very nice....set'r up....get'r run'n....24/7.... Those payment's are come'n boy's!
and now you have a kern and a tornos who would thought
Hey John, loving the videos. I subbed about 6 months ago and have been working through your videos and they are great!. I am 17 and looking to start my own gunsmithing business in the future. I already have a nice lathe and a shitty G0704 grizzly milling machine but i really need a cnc mill with 4th axis to flute barrels and bolts and such. There is a used 2013 haas tm-2p with only 1000 hours on it for sale on ebay that has caught my eye. Ive never run cnc nor do i have anyone to teach me but i think i can teach myself. I dont need a cnc mill that has a ton of power and rigidity to make big huge cuts i just need one that is extremely accurate and can hold .0002-.0003" tolerance. I wouldnt be opposed to a tormach if they can hold that kind of accuracy. Any advice? I still have one year of high school left and a couple years for a business degree at college but id like to know what im doing and have experience before i open my business for real and start to take on work. Thanks!
+Longrangehunter the Tormach will struggle with those tolerances, that's the kind of tightness I'm working with now. The Haas should do well! But don't rush into it, do your research,put in the work, and have fun with it!
+JohnGrimsmo Great, thanks for your input! Also, i know you are focusing on the rask for 2016 but how would i go about ordering a Norseman? Thanks!
good luck with service
See hugging the Mori is good for morale. :-) Was talking to a guy this morning that works at a company with a 5 axis Mori with like a 10ft table and a 12K spindle, just a mere 14million USD. The payments on that one....... glad its not me!!
They paid cash for it;) and the machine itself was around $8mil and the rest was all support, custom tooling, custom coolant cleaning system and upgraded 15k spindle. But ya, it was a $14 million package. It even came with a Delcam senior tech guy that we hired on full time, lol he is getting his green card now. The crazy thing is, they project it will pay for itself in 4.5 yrs.
+Nick Schneider +bcbloc02 that's crazy! I had no idea there were machines that expensive. I have no experience with the HUGE stuff.
+JohnGrimsmo John, what you have created and have going on IS HUGE stuff to some people. Is all perspective, thanks for all you share!
JohnGrimsmo
I like seeing the little 1/32 endmills doing their thing just as much as the 15" facemills. We have to have big parts and small parts and somebody has to make them/repair them and I enjoy seeing it either way, it is all just machining regardless of size. :-)
We have several Moris, many Okumas, a Daewoo, Hitachi-Seiki, Brother, Haas, Diedesheim, and a Murata. Always buy Japanese machines, IMO.
I can imagine pathpilot running quicker because it's linux, the controller I have built runs a asrock a55m-hvs with an apu ( built in graphic Co processor ) 8 gb for ram is over clocked to 3.2 gigs its a 64 bit machine and an 120gb ssd hard drive, in short windows 10 boots in about 40 seconds it a large tower so all cnc drives, breakout breakout boards ( just started wiring second one ) and power supplies are in the tower, a 36v for the three stepper drives and motors nema 34's, 12v for proxity home switches and 5v for breakout boards and voltage displays, the uccnc 300 can run 5 parrallel ports at once which means when I build an atc, 4th or 5th axis I will be well setup, the reason for the quick pc I to run fusion 360 on the controller so no running back and forward to edit g code, it's been about a five year build but I feel worth the spare time put into it, I am designing a atc like the one on umc 20 by dave decassin, it's a drum style changer and should hold about 20 tools I hope when finished and I plan to post the plans on grab cad, again thank you for taking the time to rely as I know you guys are always busy, thanks daniel
+Daniel Kitson sounds awesome! Great work.
good for the enclosed machine and chip conveyer.. keeps the chips outta the dog's paws..
ahh i don't think ill ever get a norseman T_T
I think you have a good video channel. Would you comment on 1, whether your TH-cam channel created your success in knife sales or did your knife sales create the TH-cam popularity. Secondly, IMHO it is mind boggling that a pocket knife can sell for as much as it does! Congratulations on your business model.
Jerry Halcomb
I’m trying to apprentice at any local CNC shop by me lol
wow this video is like send from heaven.. lol.. i have my little small cnc shop that i run daily and my mill is struggeling alot so i am looking at buying a new dmg mori but i am alittle hessitant. :p
good stuff John !
22 minutes and the machine stands still!
Mori is the god of the all machines . God bless mori :)
love the videos, mic is a little live
You know John, I have followed you guys for a long time, but your opinions on the Mori are totally skewed, that DuraVertical is not speced any better than a Haas, actually if you look at a ball bar plot vs a Haas, Haas runs theirs at 100ipm, the Mori runs theirs at 20ipm to get similar results, and also is true for their new Eco mill and CMX Mills, they use smaller ballscrews, LM guides etc. Frankly you should have had each builder test cut your parts, and the thing is you could have bought a machine for less money with more options that would make you more money. Also, you should really add a Midaco pallet changer to help with your through-put, and mori sells those for $89k with a DDR, I can send you quotes some of my customers have gotten from the mori guys. Just wanted to add my thoughts, thanks for the podcast, love it!
Thank you for that.
Great Grind..
love the shirts guys
10:15 Suddenly the unabomber walks in...ow wait it's Eric :P
The long explanation of why you justified financing almost seems like you aren't convinced it was the right decision...
yep looks like it
They are but it is scary when you are that close the purchase, the machine will be paid off in 5 and after that they can keep it for 20+ years making good parts. They could also sell it in 7-10 years and purchase another almost new machine while the machine still has lots of value so they could still have reliability and lack of wear on a newer machine.
You have to take risks in any business in order to grow, in a machine shop purchasing an expensive machine can make or break the company, I have been to auctions where a company went under because they invested heavily in machines just to lose contracts months later and go under. Their risk on this is manageable, the numbers he talked about are not bad at all.
I think he's just being thorough that's all. Justifying a price tag on some other machine that is only $50,000 less would still require just as much nerves to explain why you bought it, and wondering if you can pay it off. Also, they mentioned long term goals, buying in the moment simply due to price results in a cheap machine and cheaply made parts. I figured they are doing something more than just knives. Good to branch out.
They also wouldn't have bought this if previous income history couldn't project a 5 year payment plan to pay for it, and if you don't see 5 years of income coming, then it doesn't really matter what the price was, and you're still just as fucked. The only thing thing these guys have really lost is mostly personal income to purchase frivolous shit. At first they were happily chugging along with a satisfactory "money in, money out" with the Tormach, and now things are scaled up with the Mori. Keeping things full tilt in re-investment I see.
I say it's all good. I have nothing to do with this machine, and I by myself is already confident enough for them that they'll be here, proving everybody wrong in 10-15 years with another video why they bought a million dollar machine. ;)
Haas is a decent machine but you get raped when there are repairs to be done(at least where I am). We have a couple great service techs we use when we can't fix it ourselves, but with Haas they don't like to share technical info so you end up paying thru the nose to use their tech guys.
If you plan on holding onto a machine for many years don't forget the service side of things!
I'm jealous...I wish we had a Mori! Thanks for sharing.
You don't know what rape is until you owned a DMG Monoblock 40
We have a Mori lathe at work. When it's going it's not a bad machine but when we run into a problem Mori support doesn't want to know us. Their after sale service sucks ass! In Australia anyways, might be different in other countries. That's why we went for Mazak. We now have 6 Mazaks and 1 Mori. lol!
for what you do with that machine it's going to last 20+ years easily
also for your next machine look into robodrill or the speedio. your z travel on the mori is wasted for what you do.
a haas salesman talking about lacking ridgity and power? now ive heard it all...
hi guys, i love the video's but why are people complaining so much about mach 3 cnc, i use mach 3 cnc at home and find it ok, yes it has its problems but a lot of the youtube cnc guys all started on mach 3 cnc and got to where they are now using it true ??, i feel maybe its about making parts when all said and done, not how good the next greatest machine is, you cant compare a $150,000 cnc machine to a £20,000 can you ?? if it was me a would have 3 to 7 cnc machines that way you can make more parts at the same time ?? please let me know wot you think ok, thanks daniel
+Daniel Kitson you're right, i spent many years on mach 3 and understood it well. But it wasn't until i started using another system, Fanuc and PathPilot, that I realized how many freaking headaches Mach was giving me. It would glitch out. It would lose offsets for no reason. I had to have systems upon systems just to be able to make good parts, sometimes. When machining becomes a business not a hobby that's when the problems and issues go from being fun challenges to progress crushing headaches.
Thanks for the quick rely guys, So you think pathpilot is better ?? I number of people are hacking it i believe to run on no tormach machine because tormach won't release it to none tormach owner, I have tried the old linuxcnc when it was emc2 I liked it, but to add stuff was hard work if your not a programmer, I run a g0704 cnc at home on a uccnc300 usb board and mach 3 cnc with some custom Macro's with no issues because the uccnc card is directly driving the Mill, I believe this is similar to the Mennsa card on path pilot ??, I can see your point for running a industrial CNC machine but only if it's making good money, I have a friend I work with at times with a few million pounds sterling ( i am in the uk ) of cnc machine including a 9 axis Morri Siemens cnc milling machine, he makes £30,000 of parts a week so the money in his machines I can see, but waking up on a monday morning knowing I had to make that sort of money would scary me to death, I think the point I was trying to make was yes mach 3 cnc has it place in the cnc world as it's a big world, I just like to see anyone seaming to be get run down I hope you see my point and please keep the video's coming, thanks daniel
+Daniel Kitson the usb board you're running is a huge addition to Mach, I'm assuming it's similar to the Smooth Stepper. I always wanted to do that. Path Pilot does seem to be a lot better, but it handles everything differently so it can be very weird for the advanced stuff for a mach guy to switch over
When it comes to tools. there's no such thing as overbuying as long as the cash flow/profit is there and you're smart enough to be able to use it.
It's expensive and irresponsible to buy machines that are too small and can't keep up with the business growth as well.
+Brent Eason well said Brent!
I have run Mori's and Haas and others, I like Haas they are "smarter" in a way or easier to use, however Mori is a WAY better built machine. Nobody wants to crash, but it happens and Haas machines are fragile compared to Mori. Just my 2 cents, either way make chips and make $.
Badassmachinist!
I'll donate to your monthly payment. Norseman, Thor Damasteel blade, blued Ti honeycomb scale please. ;o)
$144k USD, it's like buying a house, except you can't live in it...
but you can buy a big house with the money you generate from it...Houses are the biggest money pits and time suckers ever.
Ironically, it's probably easier to qualify for a machine lease than a home loan of the same amount.
Foomanlol I bought a quadroplex 4 $120k that generates $3,000 per month...Plus I pay no taxes on income that I earn...just saying.
You look pretty shifty to me...like damn, the company could have done an fbi like check in three months!