When you don’t have a horizontal 😧.

[Jashley73]

....and say "I own a Kuraki". I've laid hands on them on a maintenance perspective. They are on the highest end of build quality. In my opinion surpassing Makino.

Specifically for like-similar horizontal machines, or as firms as a whole? What is it that you saw, that you felt was superior to Makio's?

I had been under the impression that Makino's were the cream of the crop in terms of construction quality, performance, etc... Surpassed only by the hyper-specialist builders, like Yasda, Mitsui-Seiki, Kern, etc...

 

[Herding Cats]

Yasda, Mitsui-Seiki

Come to papa

 

[Vancbiker]

I didn’t even know Makino played in the HBM market.

They really don’t. Their large traveling column HMCs can be ordered with a quill option which gets close to HBM territory though.

 

[Jashley73]

Come to papa

Nearby shop has a pair of early 90's Mitsui-Seiki horizontals with an early version of a chain-type pallet pool. Purchased used, but still very nice looking machines. The shop manager really praised them. He said despite their age, they had no problem doing a production hard-milling ops, and holding tight tolerances.

I've never run into any Yasda's in the wild, but I would imagine there's more than a few up north, closer to Detroit, Chicago areas. I know one guy from PM bought Yasda 5-axis/pallet-system machine, and was pretty fond of it. PX30i I believe. But, that machine is a little bit of a departure from Yasda's specialty, which seems to be high(est) precision milling in a high end tool-room environment.



(I'm just rambling at this point. I can't help it, I love CNC machines, and machinery in general...)

 

[Garwood]

But where would be the joy be in that? Since Harbour Freight, every second home garage has one of those.? (Or so I'm guessing). My Urban planning knowledge of the US, equates to what I learnt about of Hill Valley from Back to the Future.

You can get up every morning, slap your self on the chest and say "I own a Kuraki". I've laid hands on them on a maintenance perspective. They are on the highest end of build quality. In my opinion surpassing Makino.

If anything, My kuraki is a testament to how tough they are. Mine is a manual KBT1003W bought from Esco. They used it for roughing out large manganese steel castings. It isn't a .0002" machine anymore. But easily pulls off .002" which is good enough for the loggers I work for.

When I was rigging out my Makino HMC from Vancbiker's former employer I spent a lot of time ogling over the Kuraki CNC HBM's they have. I don't have a justifiable use for one, but I sure would give it a nice home and feed it work.

 

[Garwood]

Makino has ultimate refinement and max performance. Kuraki's thing is taking "brick shithouse" to a whole new level. The castings and ways and screws and just all of it is double overkill.