Chris- It’s exciting to upgrade machinery. I worked for years as a maintenance supervisor and a maintenance manager, and several other roles I’ll mention. During the times I worked for production facilities I loved working alongside operation managers and production supervisors to locate the best machinery for our company. I’ll share a very logical approach I took to buying machinery that never failed me and a method for comparing competing machines that helped me determine the proper solution for our needs.
1. Budget was never discussed until I first determined which machines would actually provide the solution we were looking for. The worst possible mistake you can make when purchasing a machine is to determine the price before you understand what is needed to accomplish your goals and solve your current issues. Machine distributors were required to provide the quote with everything but the price. When it comes right down to it if the machine you purchase doesn’t do what you need it to do, you just threw away a large chunk of money to purchase a new machine and you really didn’t get anything in return.
2. If a salesperson brought up budget before they had the proper understanding of the solution we needed or prior to me asking for the price they were out of consideration. If you tell a salesperson, you have $125K for your new machining center line I can promise you they will have a machine in the range you specified. The problem with this is you often end up with a machine that simply isn’t the one you needed. A salesman that is truly looking out for your best interest will first determine what product you really need and if after presenting the product to you the determination is made that you can’t afford the solution they are offering, they will either discount the machine to get to a price you can afford, if this is possible or bow out of the sale.
Along with working for production companies in the role I described I also spent close to 20 years as an independent technician working on just about every brand and any type of woodworking machinery. I have repaired over 20 different brands of CNCs including the two you are already considering. I have worked in hundreds of companies, and it has been an all to common experience to find business owners purchasing machines that simply weren’t properly suited for their needs. Salespeople don’t always know what they don’t know and often the only time a salesperson gets dirty is if they accidently bump into a piece of machinery on your shop floor.
To determine if machines meet your needs and to compare different brands, create a spreadsheet with the header in row one and list each of the brands you are considering beginning in column two. In column one beginning in line two list the important specifications and features that will determine which machines will provide the solution you are seeking. This will allow you to weed out all of the brands that won’t accomplish the goals you have. After you weed out the brands that don’t meet your needs, you can ask for pricing from the salespeople you are working with. The price may now weed out more, but it is always worth looking at the brands side by side to see if a more expensive machine may be justified because it is capable of performing above the competitors and allow you more growth.
My philosophy is to cut and drill for speed and accuracy, this will decrease your cost to manufacture your product, and to finish and edgeband for quality, this will raise the value of your product.
Important specifications to consider for your new CNC would be Controller type, rapid travel speeds, vectorial speed, linear cutting speeds, axis acceleration/deceleration (this is far more important than most people realize), spindle brand and size, number of vacuum zones, number of tool change positions, Z axis height, ease of use, number of proprietary parts, and several more I would be happy to share with you if you want to reach out to me. In fact, I already have a spreadsheet made I can share with you.
As you go through this process, I would also ask you to consider Nutek Machinery as you look to upgrade and reach out to me to talk about the features that set brands apart. As a technician I purposefully sought out machine manufacturers that specialize in the machine types they build, not the typical, we have every machine under the sun that are often all OK but that’s about all they are, OK. I wanted experts in the machines type they manufactured that do that one thing better than the majority of other companies doing it. I looked for machines that were heavy built, dependable, didn’t repeat the same design flaws I noticed on other brands, had the highest production efficiency, and produced the highest quality parts in the industry. I have no doubt you will find a huge number of brands in the same price point but when you start really comparing the machines, you will find the price point is often the only thing in common.
Nutek Machinery and the dealers that are working with us are doing things differently than the other guys and basing our recommendations on real life production scenarios that we have experienced and providing solutions that result in long term trusting relationships.
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