Ajax AJPR220

[Lee KennedyParticipant @leekennedy29914]

Evening all,

I have been researching cnc mills recently, looked at tormach, syil, wabeco & boxford denford machines.

I came across this new mini mill from Ajax. Comes with Siemens 808 controller.

cnc is new to me so I would be interested in others opinions.

Thanks

[Lee KennedyParticipant @leekennedy29914]

Any opinions on this machine

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

They have it at £15,100 and a bit on E-Bay right now.

Not a bad price for entry level professional training machine with all the casework needed to appease HSE. I imagine cleaning swarf out is going to be a pain.

Proper professional control from Siemens albeit bottom of the range. Allegedly some quirks when using those.

ER25 spindle which is unusual but advocated in some quarters for non production machines when multiple tool changes per job aren't a requirement.

Fits through a normal door and doesn't need 3 phase so much easier to install than a factory machine.

If you are going to be spending serious money and the relatively small table and travels are enough it looks to be a decent option. Much to be said for shiny new and up to date against ex factory with serious miles on the clock and older style controller or home brew conversion.

Big brother AJPR400 is more my speed though but bound to be too spendy!

Clive

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

Looks rather like a lighter weight Triac for the 2020s (my fully enclosed Triac 200 is 600kgs vs the AJPR's 310 ) – possibly useful as as a portable "2nd operation" machine for small parts as well as education. Haas & XYZ offer something similar, though I don't know their pricing.

Pity it doesn't appear to be available with alternative control systems.

Nigel B.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

The XYZ 2nd op machine is closer to the AJP400 than the AJPR220. Cost around £25,000 so its much more expensive, especially in real world "how long does it take to save up for one" terms.

That sort of price is getting into low mileage used Hass territory.

For real world folks I guess the price bands are up to £5,000, £5,000 to £10,000 and £10,000 to £15,000 and its a question of balancing how much performance for how much money and how much work.

Realistically most of us are going to be shopping in the sub £5,000 band which means either very small (in my terms anyway as I do 12" to the foot scale work on a Bridgeport) or lots of work.

£5,000 to £10,000 band is a total minefield from clapped out hand me downs to solid iron for conversion through nobody can figure out why it doesn't work to decent ex-training and top end of the hobby machines.

£10,000 to £15,000 is where you start to find good enough to just run ex-industry.

£15,000 up you have to think like a factory owner.

Clive

[Lee KennedyParticipant @leekennedy29914]

Thanks for the replies.

15k is at the top end of my spending on a machine, but it will make me some money. Not lots but it helps with the hobby and my salary. I would like to spend less of course.

15k seems expensive but it’s on par with a wabeco etc with enclosure. I am looking at used machinery also but I’m not looking for a project, cnc machining is something I’m learning I don’t want to overhaul an older machine.

a HAAS mini mill would be the excellent but unlikely to happen for me.

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

The main issue with industrial equipment for a home user is the cost of parts.

Haas machines are known to be relatively inexpensive to purchase new, but by all accounts their service & parts costs are very high. Siemens prices are similarly eye-watering. Even getting boards, drives etc. repaired by third party repairers is expensive – it is a rare occurence for, say, a drive repair to be less than £800 + Vat & many are double that. And even at £1500 for a repair (when a Siemens 611 drive PSU goes bang ) that is around half the price of a new unit from Siemens.

Also bear in mind that the purchase price of the machine has no bearing on replacement part prices – OEMs buying large numbers of control/drive packages get them at very low prices compared to "list" prices for one-offs, which in turn are less than "service part" prices. My former employer was offered complete Bridgeport packages for one job when Bridgeport cut back on orders – a Fanuc control, with 3 axis drives + motors, a spindle drive & motor, MPG, keyboard & all cables for less than we could buy the control on it's own. Spare parts prices are the same regardless of the initial cost of the kit & usually higher than as part of a package – from memory Heidenhain charged around 50% more for a replacement MPG pendant as a Service part than I paid for one as part of a control package bought through Sales (who would not quote for the unit on it's own – "go through Service" ! ) .

A "bargain" auction purchase can turn out expensive – my current project at work is a 1984 Gildemeister NEF710 lathe (710 mm swing over bed x 3 metres between centres ) bought as "complete but not working" from an auction for £2K while I was on holiday.

First issue – a dead CRT. £500 put an LCD replacement in, which allowed me to see the fault messages due to a dead axis drive unit. Cheaper to replace the Siemens DC servo drives & motors with Chinese brushlesss servos & motors (1 x 10Nm motor, 1 x 5Nm motor, 2 x amplifiers & cables £2.5k ) than repair the old units. That got the axes moving about & referencing nicely, so on to the spindle.

Spindle drive amplifier dead – cheaper to put in a British made Sprint Electric replacement (new 22KW DC drive £2k – repair quote for original Baumueller unit £6.5K ! ). Spindle runs now from an external reference, but won't run from Fanuc control – seems that the bespoke interface between the control & machine is defective. I could have replaced the interface with a PLC, but for not a lot more effort & up-front cost I have gone for a replacement control with built-in PLC (Fagor 8055TC £6.5k ) to replace the original Fanuc 3T Mate + bespoke interface – it was either that or cut losses & scrap it.

So not quite a bargain now – though when finished all the old, expensive-to-fix electronics will have been replaced & the machine will be more capable and easier to use than before – but would we have gone out & spent £16-17K (plus Vat, as are all the prices quoted) on this machine initially ? Probably not, though a recent search brought up the same spec. machine, working, for €15k from a dealer in Europe, so our retrofitted, upgraded machine should be worth a bit more than we have in it. I have not put in any of my time as a cost, as I get paid a salary & am fitting this in between other projects, repairs etc.

Given the price of industrial parts, it isn't really suprising to see ex-industrial machines bought by hobbyists being retrofitted with steppers & driven by Mach3, Linux CNC, Acorn etc.

Nigel B.

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