OT - Republic Lagun CNC VMC opinions

[JRLeflin]

We are considering a Republic Lagun CNC vertical machining center model: 4824 X

 

Does anybody have any experience with these good or bad ? Anything we should look out for ?

 

They have quoted with the xxxxor 8055 control system.... I've never heard of this control system... anybody have any good or bad about it ? Where is it made ? Where can we get a good mc post for it ?

 

Thank you for your replies, we have to move fairly quickly on a new machine.

 

JR

[chad fisher]

Yes i do have something bad to say them about them and i apologize for knocking them.

We have a 35x16 with the dynapath50 control the overall build of the machine isnt that great.

Ours is a little over 2yrs old and see's only light duty work for we only do r-d work for one eight hour shift a day, five days a week.

 

1st the fingers that hold the tools in the carosel are constantly breaking,

 

2nd after couple months the geared head rattles, had there rep come from california and replace gears, still rattles, sounds like gears are raking somewhat. While rep was out here he would talk on phone in spanish in front of us "we didnt like that at all. But in the end rep said that its ok, they just sound like that

When your doing finishing passes you can see the vibration in the cut from what we believe is coming from gears raking or vibration from the head.

 

3rd after one year i had to replace y axis trust bearing.

 

4th a couple months ago the glass scale in x axis went out.

 

5th keys from key board have been coming off since new and they refused to fix saying

that it was not there problem.

 

6th design of machine gaurds for enclosed machine are flawed, ours leaks coolant all over the floor. ie access doors, base of machine.

 

7th encoders for y axis are open to chips that accumlate in bottom of machine and often find there way into slide rails of encoder, very annoying. We do try to keep machines cleaned out.

 

The company that sold us the machine has now dropped them from there line up for lack of support. I will say that we are in ohio and them being based in california might have a better following there with tech support than what we had recieved here. We can not wait to get rid of that machine but we are stuck with it for a while. Since then we have bought all Haas's of different sizes and we have been pleased with these machines and there support. I am not saying haas is the only way to go but there is plenty of better built machines than the lagun especially for the money.

[Nominal]

The place I worked prior to where I am now, had two lagun's with vickers acromatic controls. Although the controls were pc based which I liked ( you can dnc via ethernet + they had about 4 meg of program space ). The machines themselves were junk. As the last person said you can't do heavy milling on them, the clips break off the carosel with great regularity which causes you to not be able to use certain positions or continually fix them, and the head sounds like a bucket of bolts. Even though the machines were only a couple of years old we stopped using them except in emergencies, and were thinking of scrapping them. Bottom line is I wouldn't recommend them. In fact I'd recommend avoiding them at all costs. Look for a nice matsuura or johnsford etc.

[RAJ]

I had one of those with a vickers control and we ended up giving it back after 1 yr we had to many problem's to mention.

if u are looking in the same price range look at dahlih machine,we have one and we never had a problem with any thing.

[RAJ]

actually chad i think u must of brough t the machine we gave back,almost the same problems as us.

[chad fisher]

actually chad i think u must of brough t the machine we gave back,almost

the same problems as us.

quote:

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No it was new.................a new piece of junk!

It makes you wonder howa company can stay in bussiness like that after seeing that we were not the only ones with so many problems.

All, and i had forgot to mention, that they bragged the hell out of the control we got, they were able to install any control on these machines but lack the no how to set them up.

Since i understood dynapaths already i had to go and setup the control because they lacked to set-up some of the features the control had, i.e mdi.

[JRLeflin]

Thank you for the replies.

 

They provided 5 references with the quotation, we have been able to contact 3 of them so far, and all references were good, which I guess is to be expected considering they are their references.

 

I asked about tool changer problems, and one said sometimes theres is finicky, but the other two said theirs were fine. But the two who liked the tool changer have the dual arm tool changer, the other has a caroussel umbrella type. Not sure of any other differences. None of them reported any coolant leaks or spindle vibrations, but once again, I assume this is to be expected.

 

We are also looking at Johnford, Chevalier, Fadal and of course Haas. One of the companies that I just mentioned didn't have a lot of nice things to say about Haas though as you might expect, but they did send some interesting information on the Haas... one of them bought one and they talked about the Servo Motors & Spindle are not what they advertise. I dunno... Haas I think is a pretty big company, I would guess there stuff is what they say it is. The price is right with the Haas though... which is probably the direction we will go, but do not know yet.

 

thank you