Myford online auction

[Steve Talbot 1Participant @stevetalbot1]

Just been looking at the Peak Pattison online auction of the remains of Myford.

Plenty of Myford lathes still for sale, although some seem to be lacking parts.

Beware 15.5% & VAT add ons and normal registration for an individual confines you to £200 max bid unless you make special provision with the auctioneers.

Didn’t see many computers for sale!!

[Steve Talbot 1Participant @stevetalbot1]

[Anonymous]

I’d really like the Butler planer, but where on earth would I put it. I’ve always been fascinated with planers since I saw one in action at W H Allens in Bedford in the early 1970s. Guess I’ll just have to wait until I win the lottery and can then buy a big industrial building and fill it full of machine tools.

 

Regards,

 

Andrew

[KMPParticipant @kmp]

I’ve been watching these Myford sell off events with a mixture of interest and sadness. I guess that the lack of sales of new/rebuilt machines on the bay either reflects the difficulty of selling good machines at that price today or, the belief that one is going to get a “bargain” at the final sale. I guess we will find out next week. On the other hand anything with a Myford name on it seems to be listed (and bought) at a premium these days, particularly the stands which appear to be a much better investment than oil or stocks and shares. Sadly, I think it reflects the cost of good quality, small quantity manufacture in this country. So another area of choice is further limited, although they are very reasonable these days I would prefer more than picking a green, grey or blue one.

 

Regards

Keith (certified “old f**t)

[Richard ParsonsParticipant @richardparsons61721]

Andrew

Be like me. I want a planer so i am drawing plans to build one myself

Rdgs

Dick

[LordedmondParticipant @lordedmond]

Also look at item 7 in the T&C’s

 

all elec/mech items are untested and carry no Guarantee

 

So therefor its got to be a good price as stated above plus 1.5% plus the Vodka And Tonic

 

 

 

 

 

so caviat emptor

 

 

 

 

Stuart

[mickParticipant @mick65121]

I would like to associate myself with the last comment. I bought the vast majority of my kit at auction when I started a small engineering concern in the eighties. On quite a few occassions I’ve seen “Joe Public” pay more for second hand small tooling than the brand new price. You will be bidding against the trade, the only real bargin will be the bid after the machine dealers drop out, but remember they pass on the VAT. Auctions are great and can be really exciting when your bidding against others, the trick is to keep a realistic price in mind AND STICK TO IT. As a previous post pointed out, you will be paying an extra 35% on the winning bid and will have to collect your win. If you are going to bid, good luck

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Some times you get lucky, I wanted a surface plate, went to an auction, there were two 12″ x 18″plates, the first one went up to $NZ 100, the second one, no one was interested and I got it for the starting price of $NZ 15, I spoke to the bloke in charge of the workshop, he reccond the price should have been the other way round, I got the accurate one (missing the handles), the other one (with handles) needed rescraping.

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 16/08/2011 14:37:28

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Just a heads up about this auction.

It’s ALL online and not as some though an attended auction with on line bids taken into account .

 

So don’t roll up on the day.

 

John S.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Anyone been following this auction ?

 

Myford Auction

 

The first day has finished but as each lot is sold it disappears off the site so there is no going back to see what something made.

 

Might be wrong but highest priced thing I saw sold was the MG12 CNC grinder at £7,400

Lots 1 to 399 went today, 400 to 800 tomorrow

 

One Conn-i-sewer standing at £3000 at the moment with 20 hours to go and a few more round the £2100 mark but that doesn’t say anything, it’s under the hammer that counts.

 

It was pointed out to me that not all the lathes are complete, some were taken off the line before final test so unless you went on the viewing day it’s hard to know, the description isn’t that good.

 

John S.

[KMPParticipant @kmp]

John, I got transfixed watching it and spent much too much time “doing nothing”. The Hitachi Seiki CNCs fetched £10K and £12K I think, and the Traub was over £7K as well. I started watching the Traub at about £1300 with 2 minutes to go and with the last minute bids adding 2 minutes to the end time it sold over an hour later.

 

Looking at what was going on I’m not sure there will be many real bargins, I was trying to guess why some lots didn’t seem very popular and now you have explained why. I don’t think I will be tempted to bid blind. I see the old twin head Archdale mill made what I thought was a fair price as well and the 540 grinders were popular. Perhaps I am just too tight. I don’t know where these machines will end up but the market is more lively than I thought. Then again the Hitachi Seiki Twin Pallet CNC for that price was a bit of a steal if you have a job/customer for it.

 

The other thing that struck me was what did Myford do with all this machinery? With the small workforce towards the end they must have had several machines each. I have to say that my impression of them never investing in modern machinery was a bit off although they seemed to have stayed at the lower end of the market. I am left with the feeling that a few well chosen (and admitedly very expensive) machines would have produced more than the large quantity of older kit they seemed to have held on to. Then again I am no business man so what do I know.

 

Regards

 

Keith

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

One thing I noticed prior to the auction was that those CNC had all the paperwork with them and there were a lot of receipts for work done on them, not cheap work either.

So given what they cost to run and their age it makes me wonder what the true value was.

 

Again like yourself I didn’t realise they had these machines which then opens up the questions why were the lathes so expensive and why did they take that much hand fitting if everything coming of these CNC’s were so good ?

 

When I worked at Raglans in 19 ought plonk we had to hand fit the machines because every part out of stores was very slightly different, mostly polishing to get fits etc.

Years later when we were assembling machines from parts from Taiwan we were down to assembling as every part was identical.

 

John S.

[CabengParticipant @cabeng]

The Connoisseur is definitely not finished – no nameplate, no labels, no CE mark, no fiduciary line on the cross slide or the tailstock, no final test, and most importantly, no dowels in the leadscrew bracket at the tailstock end – they’re not just missing, the leadscrew hasn’t been aligned and the holes for the dowels haven’t been drilled, which apparently is only done after final test and alignment has been completed.

 

The leadscrew dowels are missing from some other machines – load an appropriate picture that shows the bracket clearly and use the zoom tool – if the dowels can’t be seen they probably aren’t there. They are cleary visible on completed machines

[Steve Talbot 1Participant @stevetalbot1]

According to my tally some of the hammer prices were as follows, so absolutely no bargains then!

 

Item 758 S7B+ £4900

Item 759 S7 Conn. £5100

Item 760 S7B £4550

Item 763 S7B+ £ £4500

Item 765 S7B £4850

 

All the above + 15.5% + 20%

Some had parts missing, or not finalised & inspected, one was metric.

 

Interestingly some of these prices were more than the liquidators were willing to sell for at their sale and at that time they promised the lathes would be completed as they were going to keep on some original Myford staff for this purpose.

 

The Nuto H32 oils fetched very high prices, above the price I have been quoted for 20litre drums, and on a par with the full retail prices after the commission & VAT have been added.

 

Ah well end of another era!

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Second day I noticed that a mill drill attachment for a Myford lathe made £1800 whereas a full VM – E milling machine only made £1250.

 

I noticed the oil prices, I think, without checking that I can buy 25 litres for about £32, last price I saw on the separate bottles was £86 ?

 

It would have been nice if the sold items had stayed on the site for anyone to check later.

 

John S.

Edited By John Stevenson on 27/08/2011 10:30:22

[CabengParticipant @cabeng]

Interestingly some of these prices were more than the liquidators were
willing to sell for at their sale and at that time they promised the
lathes would be completed as they were going to keep on some original
Myford staff for this purpose.

 

The Connoisseur was £9134 incl. VAT at the sale event – I know this because I bought it! I was promised that it would be completed, tested, etc during the coming week, ready for collection 10 days later.

 

It wasn’t ready, it had the problems I listed above. The missing parts were with RDG, there was an agreement that they would return them when they had sorted everything out – but of course when that would happen was an unknown quantity, and it was for sure that whenever it was there would be no-one left to finish the machine anyway. As the liquidator had not, and could not, fulfill the contract, I terminated it. I must say that there was no problem whatsoever in doing this.

 

In its place I decided to take the long bed show lathe, which was cheaper – I hadn’t bought this at the sale as I didn’t think I could find space for it in the workshop, but I had subsequently found that this would in fact be possible. After sorting out an administrative hiccup, the price difference was promptly refunded to my bank account.

 

So, it’s now auctioned for £7069 incl. premium and VAT – well, given that it wasn’t finished, that seems reasonable to me, but not a bargain. But I hope the purchaser knows how to set that leadscrew up and dowel the end bracket, it’s a very critical alignment.

 

 

[KMPParticipant @kmp]

I guess that there are always winners and losers with this type of sale. I was a bit miffed to see the VM-E go at that price as that was what I offered for it several weeks ago and got turned down. I found them difficult to deal with as the price seemed to go up as you talked to them, then again I wasn’t offering what they priced things at so I expect I was put down as a plonker. I suppose the auctioneers did well from it anyway. I couldn’t believe the oil prices as I bought 5 litres last week and knew I was being screwed at £11 but it was close and available.

> >

As John mentioned before the whole sad story is intriguing to say the least, the lathe side of the business had obviously become the bridesmaid but of course I have no idea how many grinders they were producing. I have visited quite a number of manufacturing companies both good and bad in my career but I can’t think of one that had so much machinery and such a large inventory of spares compared to their apparent throughput and staff numbers. It certainly looks like the JIT and KanBan periods passed them by. I guess they had many machines set for one task and their batch size appears to match their once substantial output. Still, I don’t really know and conjecture is not productive, unfortunately the workforce amongst others have paid with their jobs. The closest model I can think of is a few family run businesses where they were running more as a hobby/pastime and out of loyalty to their long standing workforce – I have no idea if this applies to any extent here, but it is always sad to see such companies fold under modern business pressures.

Certainly a sad day though.

Keith

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