Hi guys,
My name is Ryan and I've been looking around the site and seems there are some very knowledgeable Milltronics folks. I will start by saying my only experience with CNC machines was a small LPKF circuit board routing table in college. Have experience building circuits with micro controllers, radio control vehicles, building and programming robotics, and computers/electronics in general for my daily job. My cousin who lives in a different state runs CNC grinders for a living and my brother who also lives in another state used CNC machines through college. Neither of them have any experience with Milltronics.
On to the machine. I found a Partner 1E mill for sale in a nearby city. The asking price is $6500 as it sits with no tooling. The company that purchased it new used it to make plastic parts for auto engine rebuilds. The company that has it now purchased it 11 years ago and it has just sat since the company they hired to program it flaked out and they no longer build the parts they intended this machine for. The machinist mentioned below isn't very comfortable with CNC so he didn't use it. He does turn it on and run it ever month or so but not cutting anything.
I had a coworker that lives near the seller go and look at it for me, he has some experience with wood CNC production machines during an internship. I'm posting here to get an idea of what I should offer the guy and if anything mentioned could lead to expensive repairs in the near future. The machine is hooked up to 3 phase power right now but from reading here it sounds like I could run it off single phase. I plan to use the machine as a hobby building parts for car/truck restorations/customizations, ATV modifications, snowmobiles, jet skis, whatever I am interested in at the time. Here is my co-worker's email:
I wasn't able to get all the information that I was looking to get, but here is what I have:
Milltronics Partner 1E, S/N 2380, Date of Manufacture 342 (I don't know what that means. It appears the machine is 1995 vintage)
Centurion V controller, v 5.76 (no serial number that I found)
80386 ISA motherboard with Seagate 1GB HDD (basically empty), 3.5" floppy, 2 DB25 connections (only one wired). Running DOS 6.22.
Front panel was described as "114"
Acroloop axis controllers. v0125. Firmware dated 5/25/95
Safetronics PC3 freq drive. I was not able to verify whether it could be configured to 240V input. I forgot to see how it is currently configured.
12 tool changer.
They have about 8 different tool heads (a nice selection), however they are not currently included in the sale. I am sure they would be happy to sell them to you, but it sounded like it was going to be about another $1k.
I was able to exercise the X,Y, and Z axes. The X sounds like it has a bit of a problem. I think the problem is with the bearing at one end, not the drive, but you would have to use a stethoscope to find out for sure. Looking at the screw it is a bit chewed up, but not hugely. Y and Z seemed to be pretty smooth. I was not able to exercise the milling head much. They had one program that ran it at 100 rpm. I wasn't able to figure out how to do manual control of the speed even though it looked like it should be able to be used in full manual mode. The milling head is a belt drive and has two different speed settings. It is a manual belt change to change speed ranges. I am not sure what the speed ranges were in the different configurations. I am thinking that low range was up to maybe 1500 rpm.
The coolant pump seemed to work (at least in flood mode). It is missing the sprayers, but the guy seemed to indicate he had taken them off, and they were cheap anyway.
Has programming manual and schematics.
Requires air for tool changing. They indicated that the air was leaking (not sure if it was in the machine) and had disconnected it. Therefore I wasn't really able to exercise the tool changer other than to spin it. I moved it back and forth by hand and it at least moved.
Some heat damage is visible on one of the axis controller ribbon cables.
Some dodgy wiring connections to the top of the mill head.
Some patching visible inside the cabinet to contain coolant leaks it looks like.
I was not able to find out total machine hours or anything like that. They swear they haven't used it and the last guys only cut plastic with it. The cabinet looked pretty beat up, but that could just be the age. They have a lot of equipment that they are trying to sell and they seem to need the money as they have had a bad year. The first guy didn't seem to know much about anything. He is sort of a front office guy (might be the head boss). The machinist guy seemed to know much more about what they had and what it may be worth. He just didn't seem to get along with the machine at all. He didn't know much about how to operate it. He says it wasn't similar to what he had used in the past.
My initial reaction from reading this is it may need new ballscrews and perhaps some repairs on the tool changer to fix the air leak. How much would that cost? I would do it myself and use that as an opportunity to learn more about the machine. Is $6000 a reasonable offer if the tooling is included? Or do you think 6k is still high based on it needing work. Thanks in advance for any help!
My name is Ryan and I've been looking around the site and seems there are some very knowledgeable Milltronics folks. I will start by saying my only experience with CNC machines was a small LPKF circuit board routing table in college. Have experience building circuits with micro controllers, radio control vehicles, building and programming robotics, and computers/electronics in general for my daily job. My cousin who lives in a different state runs CNC grinders for a living and my brother who also lives in another state used CNC machines through college. Neither of them have any experience with Milltronics.
On to the machine. I found a Partner 1E mill for sale in a nearby city. The asking price is $6500 as it sits with no tooling. The company that purchased it new used it to make plastic parts for auto engine rebuilds. The company that has it now purchased it 11 years ago and it has just sat since the company they hired to program it flaked out and they no longer build the parts they intended this machine for. The machinist mentioned below isn't very comfortable with CNC so he didn't use it. He does turn it on and run it ever month or so but not cutting anything.
I had a coworker that lives near the seller go and look at it for me, he has some experience with wood CNC production machines during an internship. I'm posting here to get an idea of what I should offer the guy and if anything mentioned could lead to expensive repairs in the near future. The machine is hooked up to 3 phase power right now but from reading here it sounds like I could run it off single phase. I plan to use the machine as a hobby building parts for car/truck restorations/customizations, ATV modifications, snowmobiles, jet skis, whatever I am interested in at the time. Here is my co-worker's email:
Quote:
I wasn't able to get all the information that I was looking to get, but here is what I have:
Milltronics Partner 1E, S/N 2380, Date of Manufacture 342 (I don't know what that means. It appears the machine is 1995 vintage)
Centurion V controller, v 5.76 (no serial number that I found)
80386 ISA motherboard with Seagate 1GB HDD (basically empty), 3.5" floppy, 2 DB25 connections (only one wired). Running DOS 6.22.
Front panel was described as "114"
Acroloop axis controllers. v0125. Firmware dated 5/25/95
Safetronics PC3 freq drive. I was not able to verify whether it could be configured to 240V input. I forgot to see how it is currently configured.
12 tool changer.
They have about 8 different tool heads (a nice selection), however they are not currently included in the sale. I am sure they would be happy to sell them to you, but it sounded like it was going to be about another $1k.
I was able to exercise the X,Y, and Z axes. The X sounds like it has a bit of a problem. I think the problem is with the bearing at one end, not the drive, but you would have to use a stethoscope to find out for sure. Looking at the screw it is a bit chewed up, but not hugely. Y and Z seemed to be pretty smooth. I was not able to exercise the milling head much. They had one program that ran it at 100 rpm. I wasn't able to figure out how to do manual control of the speed even though it looked like it should be able to be used in full manual mode. The milling head is a belt drive and has two different speed settings. It is a manual belt change to change speed ranges. I am not sure what the speed ranges were in the different configurations. I am thinking that low range was up to maybe 1500 rpm.
The coolant pump seemed to work (at least in flood mode). It is missing the sprayers, but the guy seemed to indicate he had taken them off, and they were cheap anyway.
Has programming manual and schematics.
Requires air for tool changing. They indicated that the air was leaking (not sure if it was in the machine) and had disconnected it. Therefore I wasn't really able to exercise the tool changer other than to spin it. I moved it back and forth by hand and it at least moved.
Some heat damage is visible on one of the axis controller ribbon cables.
Some dodgy wiring connections to the top of the mill head.
Some patching visible inside the cabinet to contain coolant leaks it looks like.
I was not able to find out total machine hours or anything like that. They swear they haven't used it and the last guys only cut plastic with it. The cabinet looked pretty beat up, but that could just be the age. They have a lot of equipment that they are trying to sell and they seem to need the money as they have had a bad year. The first guy didn't seem to know much about anything. He is sort of a front office guy (might be the head boss). The machinist guy seemed to know much more about what they had and what it may be worth. He just didn't seem to get along with the machine at all. He didn't know much about how to operate it. He says it wasn't similar to what he had used in the past.