What About Used Home CNC Equipment?

[Liger Zero]

Does anyone specialize in used small-scale CNC suitable for a home-shop? Possibly old lab-units or prototyping machines or school units?

Buying new is nice and all but I want to exhaust all possibilities before I put my money down.

[Mark Hockett]

There's been a lathe on Seattle's craigslist for a while,
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/tls/1000966517.html

[Liger Zero]

I mean more like machinery dealers and the like.

[hornluv]

I don't know of any that specialize in small CNC machines, but if your state has a surplus auction system in place, keep an eye out there. Illinois has a nice surplus website and I've seen several small CNC machines come out of tech schools. They all went higher than I could afford, but still...

[S_J_H]

I have seen a few of this type machine being sold on e-bay. Small school or lab type cnc machines. Usually older with outdated controls.

Not a big market for them IMHO.

Steve

[macona]

Look for a ProLight mill. They are smaller mills and look pretty decently made. I saw one on ebay for $999 a few weeks ago.

[John Stevenson]

We get loads of Denford and Boxford CNC machines over here, both mills and lathes out of schools and colleges, most with dead electronics.
If they are not dead they are useless being on BBC and Acorn computers or proprietary mother boards.

If you can get these from the schools direct they usually come for peanuts but if they get on Ebay or a dealer gets them, then they fetch serious money.

The larger ones are nice machines but you are only buying a carcase, true they have ball screws and pressure oiling in many cases but the motors are old design and not up to much.

I used to convert many of these over to new electronics and if the customer wanted to save money and keep the original motors then it seriously impeded the rapids the machine could do.

Stepper motors have made great advances in the last few years.

.

[Stepside]

If you buy a used Prolight make sure you get the contol box as well as the card in the computer. The cards are expensive and do not necessarly fit/install in newer computers. They are a stout machine and will machine steel as well as aluminum and brass. They are not real fast but they are dependable. Another plus is that they have an R8 spindle.

[macona]

I think they also come in a ISO 20 or 30 spindle as well. Some with tool changers as well. One of the ones we are getting for techshop (We have three coming, 1 series 1000 and 2 series 2000) has the 4 position tool changer. The 1000's are stepper drive the 2000's are servo.

Stepper may be better but they still suck big time.

[John Stevenson]

Stepper may be better but they still suck big time.

SLuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp :rolleyes: :rolleyes: