Looking for professional opinions on buying a new CNC.
I own and operate a custom cabinet shop north of Toronto, Ontario.
Our current CNC has been starting to give us problems. It’s 11Yrs old and I bought it brand new. It’s an SCM Pratixs S, 4 x 8 flat table. I think it needs to be replaced.
We bought this machine for several reasons; price at the time was fair, it takes up a small footprint in our very small shop and we had a local dealer.
Over the last couple of years it has had quite a few breakdowns. SCM has had trouble keeping decent technicians. It seems like a different guy comes to our shop each time. Last guy was useless.
We also are still using the Mystro software that came with the machine.
So the big question is; should I buy another SCM or a different brand?
We need a solid dependable machine, small footprint, decent software, reasonable price and most of all good tech service with available parts
What company in the Toronto area is my best bet.

Thanks in advance.

I know those Italian machines are hard to turn down when you look at the price. I've had a few of them. If you got 11 years, you are actually lucky. Back in 2003 I took delivery of a Northwood Machine twin table router. It was more expensive than my company wanted to pony up. I was able to convince them that with the product they wanted to produce plus the stuff they never envisioned, I got the go ahead. After 21 years, the machine is still running every day. 2 years ago, I bought another. Some machines cost more than others up front, but some are built for the long haul. Some guys want you to trade in and buy another new one after 7-10 years. Not my model for success. Good luck on your search! Oh, the tech service has been phenominal. Haven't needed much other than the wear and tear items, but the techs have been solid. We do some stuff on our own, but not a lot. Yes, I have owned SCM, been to the factory, but not since the '90's.

Hi John,

I'm located in the Peterborough area and I distribute Blue Elephant CNC's. I have customers using them in the GTA, if you would like to see one in action. Please contact me if you are interested in learning more. I can provide you with my phone number if you prefer to talk in person.

Good luck with your search.

Richard

I too am north of the GTA.

We have many CNC's through the shop here, Biesse, Anderson, Komo, Thermwood. All had good and bad.

My current machines are a 2002 Komo and a 2001 Biesse Rover. The Komo is still dead accurate.

I would never buy new. Lots of good old heavy iron out there that has lots of life left and is much sturdier than the entry level new stuff. Fancy options are just opportunities for breakdowns and service calls. Stick with a Fanuc control and the range of software options increases exponentially.

Drop by sometime and we can chat.

I recommend Haas brand cnc machines, our company has purchased many, they are perfect in parts manufacturers

Haas is known for it's VMCs, not routers.

Anderson. They are great machines, run on Fanuc controls with guaranteed parts availability for years and run day in and day out. Make sure you get with offload capability to almost double your output.

What are the key factors to consider when choosing between high-end, long-lasting CNC routers and more affordable Italian machines for woodworking businesses?

I have owned holzher, multicam, 2 komos, and just purchased a brand new cro router.

Was very excited about the onsrud router. But it turned out to have been the worst purchase of my career. False advertisements, defect's in their manufacturing, terrible warranty coverage, and their favorite saying is “customer failure”.

If I could go back I would have kept both of my komos and spent a fraction of what I spent on my cronsrud trash for someone to redo the electronics…… sigh

Buy a used komo that was made in Minnesota facility and get someone to change electronics (~40k). Run it hot. Run it hard. Never look back.

Z, I feel your pain. Almost bought a Komo back in 2002. Thats when the wheels started falling of on that brand. Bought a Northwood and never looked back. Bought another one almost 20 years later. The first is still running everyday. Did some consulting many years ago that involved Onsrud. What I saw in the field made me never consider those guys. I made good choices. By smarts, or luck? I don't really know, but we have been very happy with those decisions. Good luck with all of it.

Sauk Rapids Komo was an absolutely amazing facility. More importantly they built absolute tanks and actually stood behind their products (cough…onsrud)

Quick story: my first komo had a 12hp GC spindle on it and the bearings locked up really bad within a few weeks. I called komo and within 2 days they had a tech at my facility with a brand new 16hp GC spindle, larger vfd, and swapped it out no questions asked. They upgraded the spindle as an apology for the downtime and problem. Ironically the almost exact same thing happened with our Onsrud router last year. The difference is that onsrud said “well Z, 99.9% of the time that spindle problems were a “customer failure”, and unfortunately we don’t cover wear and tear items. They asked me how badly did we crash the machine? I could t believe I was being accused of this,. We didn’t crash it. This isn’t our first rodeo and if we did it would have shown up in our alarm records. Which were completely empty. After weeks of limping along with a nasty sounding spindle while they argued that I needed to buy a new spindle and send my original one back to HSD for inspection. Long story short they made me buy a new spindle and I had to pay to freight the defective spindle to HSD in Florida. Best part, there was nothing wrong with the spindle. It was an assembly problem (per my HSD pal in their service department) onsrud still won’t own up to that and said “it’s a very unusual situation and we have never had something like this happen” yeah yeah yeah they are just not the company you want to rely on to feed your family and count on for business.

Rant over.