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Anybody know anything about Milltronics?

Laidtorest81

Plastic
Joined
May 13, 2008
Location
Louisiana, USA
Our company is in need of a vertical mill with at least 120" of x travel. Milltronics makes a bridge mill with available 150" of travel. However, we are reluctant to buy a machine brand that we have no experience with. Our shop runs all Doosan and have had great performance from them. The machine features are exactly what we want. What worries us is in this world you get what you pay for and the milltronics machine is very inexpensive. So if anybody runs one of these please let me know if you had any maintenance issues with it. We just dont want to end up with a Haas:skep:
 
Don't know whats wrong with a Haas , but Milltronics is all I know . I have had 2 of them for about 8 years and love them . Although I am not familiar with this particular bridge mill , I can say that I am impressed with the control . The Centurian is so easy to program using their conversational , that I rarly use G code at all .
The main thing to consider is the dealer /company support to help with any future machine or program issues , and they really shine at this .
Check out cnczone.com and go to the Milltronics room there for more info .
There is a factory rep that lurks there and is always ready with the answers .
Not to crumb any other brand , but my experience with this machine is all positive .
FBBob
 
I am also looking at a Milltronics purchase for early next year. I only need a regular VMC for now but I have always been impressed with the way the company handles itself and with some of the construction features of the machine. I have looked at the machines for many years, but so far have been stuck with buying used machines. Now that I want a new machine the RW20 looks like the right fit for what I need.

Of course like you I would like to hear from owners who currently have one before I sign the check. Hopefully someone here will have the same machine you are looking at.

Charles
 
Several of my shops have only Milltronics machines. I dont have to work on them very often, they just keep running. I sell for a few other brands, but Milltronics makes a good machine. Check out Webb machinery. Its taiwan equipment but very good support.
webbmachinery.com
I dont know if they have anything that big, call and ask for Todd Barsby- 951 277 8885
 
Earlier this year I looked at a used Milltronics machine. I also wondered about the company. I called to inquire about parts availability and service. They were very customer friendly and eagar to answer all my questions. I questioned the rep about their early controls. He said they have upgrades in stock from key boards, motherboards, to new display screens. The prices he quoted me I thought were very reasonable. I never promote companies however my experience with them was so good it stuck with me. I have also heard others say the same thing.
 
I have nothing but Milltronics VMCs so I may be a little biased, but I think they are a good machine. The older ones that I have could have more rigidity, but this new one is a whole different animal (11-12 years newer). I don't know a whole lot about there bridge mills, but I can say that their customer service is great. The controls are great to work with. I do program CAM and for some of the simple stuff it is a breaze to do at the face of the machine.
I looked at HAAS, but with the machine that we needed it had 7" between spindle nose and table when the head was all the way down. It weighed 5,000 lbs. less than the milltronics. The real deal breaker was the gap between table and spindle nose though.
The extra year warranty was nice too though.
 
I had a 2001 ML20 lathe for a few years and I can echo all the good things said above about the people and service at Milltronics. The controls are reliable and nice to use. The Iron in the smaller machines is/was typical Taiwan quality, but it was getting better every model change. If that has continued it should be pretty good by now. My lathe did extremely well for us, had a hard life here and went to the next owner in fine condition. I've never touched one of the larger machines, that could be a very different case as well.
 
I run a RW20 and a VM30XP well to be honest they both run well program easily. Cutomer support is good parts are readily available. So those are the good points. When we got the first VM30 (get it 1st) we had nothing but trouble with it for 2Yrs from almost day 1 but Im not sure quality was the issue or service techs not knowing what they were doing. Milltronics did replace after 2yrs with a brand New 1 plus another 1 yr waranty this 1 has ran with no problems waranty ran out a still running. The RW20 had a minor axis drive fault error but again Milltronics upgrade the Axis drive and its ran well for the 3 yrs we have had them.

So as far as milltronics Support there machines and cutomer satisfaction htere better than most and the Only cost out of our company was rigging the new replacement

Bill
 
I run a Milltronics RW15 with Centurion 7 control.

I don't think it is a good machine. In fact, I'm kind of mad at it right now so I shouldn't go into too much detail. Every time I think of a complaint to give as an example, it cascades onto other complaints onto other complaints.

How much are they, anyway?
 
Well, I don't like much about it, honestly, other than the fact that it IS a CNC mill with a tool changer.

The accuracy is very poor. The mill has a published positioning accuracy of .0004" :eek: and it is very difficult to get the backlash parameter set just right in order to leave an acceptable transition at arc quadrants. I will painstakingly set the backlash one day and it'll be different the next, from one material to the next. The transition line that it leaves at arc quadrants is huge, not acceptable for any part I'm interested in making. Rigid tapping employs a "fudge factor" instead of having an accurate spindle encoder.

The Centurion 7 control is not very refined. The buttons and handwheel are total junk. Punch a button hard and it pops off. Change from one screen to another and common softkeys change position. The names of the softkeys don't make sense. You just have to get used to them, there's really no rhyme or reason to how the screen is laid out.

The conversational is not that great. For the most part, it's simply built on top of G-code canned cycles. You fill in the values that populate the G83 command, for example. You input a program block of "drill cycle end" for G80.

The control crashes or freezes up often enough. Do something wrong and you have to shut off the machine.

The parameters are set up horribly. I've had the stupidest problems because of ass backward parameter settings.

The machine's operator manual is not well written, not very thorough. You have to figure out what someone's ambiguous words mean or use trial and error to figure out the G-code. There really is no explanation of the conversational programming, it simply refers you to another page in the book that does a poor job of explaining the G-code canned cycles.

The machine moves in as many increments as you turn the handwheel, so when you roll it around to move the table it sounds like it is running over gravel. The Z axis makes this atrocious noise during program operation, like a goose being stabbed or something. and if you rest your head on the machine while Z is moving up and down in rapid, you can hear the whole head wandering, hunting down the ways. A slow and ugly bumping sound, not the smooth movement you'd expect from a machine tool. The whole machine sounds awful.

Now I will admit, I learned to mill on newer Hurco VMX's with dual screen control. I thought Hurcos were shoddy machines with a marvelous user interface. I thought they were surprisingly accurate machines, cheaply made overall but with that marvelous Ultimax dual screen control, you can forgive the weak points.

The Hurco blows this thing away on, I would say, every little detail of quality and usefulness. I would take a 10 year old Hurco VMX instead of a new RW15 as I understand it.

I don't know. I feel bad, I'm always trashing people's favorite tools, but I don't like this Milltronics machine.
 
I ran Milltronics machines for 7 yrs. and never had any major problems. I've been away from them for 7 yrs., I miss running them.:bawling:The controls made sense to me. It's pretty much fill in the blanks.

I've never run any other CNC's so I don't have the perspective that a lot of people do, but I always felt that they were a decent machine. Other machines are definitely heavier built, but when you're stepping up from a manual Bridgeport style mill with R-8 almost anything is definitely better. As with anything it all depends on perspective and what you're trying to accomplish.
 
Our company is in need of a vertical mill with at least 120" of x travel. Milltronics makes a bridge mill with available 150" of travel. However, we are reluctant to buy a machine brand that we have no experience with. Our shop runs all Doosan and have had great performance from them. The machine features are exactly what we want. What worries us is in this world you get what you pay for and the milltronics machine is very inexpensive. So if anybody runs one of these please let me know if you had any maintenance issues with it. We just dont want to end up with a Haas:skep:
The Lathes are good for BlackSmith Like Machinist Work/Repair Work and/or production runs in large volume that contain not the strictest tolerances. One off repair work I.e. a sprocket boring operation holding + - .0010 in a 15 part batch might work out in favorable time if the person running the machine is a good machinist that can chase the bore around a little and make a few offsets. Wide open tolerance work of the simple basic and intermediate variety in terms of shape geometry can probably be ran in production lots by an attentive machinist apprentice. As far as the conversational programming goes. It is not FANUC Manual Guide for cnc lathes. But it’s not Prototrak either. It’s somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t buy the older Milltronics machines if you are doing complex tight tolerance work. I don’t know if the newer ones are more functional to program complex geometry in conversational format. The G-Code format for Milltronics Lathes as I remember is total BS but it might not be because I don’t know what the added mandatory P values do? But Milltronics lathes run on atypical g code. Rather Milltronics g code per say. I think they’re great machines for the right environments. Like the manual machine shop where everyone has been running manual lathes for 40 years and you need a Cnc machine to serve as a gap to a younger generation of machinists that you are beginning to employ or may employ in the future. So in conclusion, excellent machines for the right types of shops. Bad for aerospace or complex prototypes. Good for first Cnc in the garage shop out back. Bad for automated environments that contain machine operators hitting the button. Great for basic and some intermediate level one offs. Lastly bad because they are flimsy and not very rigid so a crash is a little more difficult to navigate. But these are really good machines in general because people love them because they’re easy to use/user friendly except for the wonky style of G-Code they run off of and that the machinist writes in. Mastercam or CAM is a must buy if your shop wants to get super advanced with part geometry because your machinists on the shop floor are not going to want to learn the Milltronics styled G-Code if they’re used to FANUC or Haas G-Code. Adios.
 








 
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