CNF PRECISION ENGINEERING LTD

[kraft]

Hi,

Can you tell me why you have chosen the citizen sliding head, especially over the Star.

We are looking into sliders, and basically come up against a coin toss.

Citizen are offering me the L20, and Star are offering the SR20. They are basically the same price (give or take a few), but i am hearing different things about the quality of each machines.

We have a lot of stainless steel parts in production at the moment, and we want to put these on a sliding head, one thing i have heard is that the citizen cant handle st.st very well!.. is this the case?

Some of your input would be great, as you have the experience with these machines.

Thanks for your help.

Hope someone is reading this forum!..

Thanks

[neil]

Hiya Kraft,

to be honest we run stainless all the time (lots of medical parts) on a citizen M32 and we dont have any problems at all with it. In the most part we run 303 or 316 stainless, but also have done others like 17-4PH.

I think nowadays the machines are much of a muchness to be honest. We went for a citizen mainly becuase the agent was only a few miles down the road, where as Star were in midlands. That said I have found people seem to make a choice and stick with it on future machines. I know of sub-contractors that have all Star and I know some that have all Citizen.

Sorry I cant be anymore help.

Neil

[kraft]

brilliant, thanks very much, you have been a great help.

I was thinking more of citizen, and they are only down the road in watford and very easy to view the machine, and star are miles away which is a pain.

The problem is Star are offering me a SR20 for under 90k, where as citizen machine (L20) is approx 115k, and they are trying to sell on the basis on "price per part" which just confuses me even more to which machine to go for.

We have always had fixed head lathes, so our expereince in these machine is zero, but can see the huge benifits in the cycles times etc in sliding heads.


On another note, i like your website, your company seems great!

[neil]

Hiya, to be honest this price per part stuff you can ignore. Its all well and good them giving you cycle times for a part but in the real world maintaining the cycle times either company give you will be ambitious in my experience. Making a small batch in that time is possible, but when you take into account tool wear and batch sizes its a whole different ball game, but it wont take you long to get a feel of it once your slider is in place.

I have had little dealings with Star only for them to make some samples for a project we were working on, but Citizen I have had a lot of dealings with and my experience has been all positive. The staff are very approachable and friendly and always make an effort. Star were also very helpful during my dealing with them.

Im sure if you needed to see either machines in use then both of them will take you to companies local to you. I did that so I could get some feedback off operators of the machines, and this advice actually put me off Tornos machines cos of what the operators said. Im in Aylesbury so you are welcome to look at our M32 anytime.

Hope that helps

Neil @ CNF

[kraft]

Hi Neil,

I was at citizen last week, and a guy called Phil was showing me the machines, he said he knew you guys very well!.

The Citizen was a damm good machine, and i think if they come in with a good offer which matches at least the capability of the star machine, then i think we will go with that. We have a customer who we are now looking at their high volume parts so may have one soon hopefully.

Just cant get my head round quoting 20p for something where usually i would have charged 2.50

Thank for the offer for coming to see your machine, it may be good for us to actually speak with someone who uses the machine and is not trhying to sell us one and i live in aylesbury, so would be easy to come and talk with you.

Also, i see you have centreless grinding and also thread rolling capacity, we sub out work for these two ops, so maybe speak with you about future parts?

Thanks again,

Mark

[neil]

Hi mark,

yep pop in anytime. The thread rolling we actually do on the slider!! so can show you some parts if you wana see.

Yes we know Phil very well. Good guy to know, he knows his stuff with the citizens for sure, and always very helpful, in fact all of them there are.

Neil

01296 481727

[kraft]

Hi Neil,

Bit of an update, we purchased the Citizen L20 machine, and had it installed last week, Training this week, all going well and very pleased with the machine so far.

Couple of questions if you dont mind?.

Do you use anything to seperate the oil from the swarf?

And parts washing/drying on higher volume work, do you use any type of machine?

Thanks very much!

Mark

[neil]

hey Kraft,

I did hear youo bought one! Well done!

We just drain the swarf and the parts in a large sieve type device overnight. The oil is a bit messy to deal with.

You can buy proper washing machines and seperators, but I cant see that being necessary for one or two sliders. We drain the swarf and parts and hot spray wash to parts before packing. This usually suits.

Hope this helps

Neil @ CNF

[shozza69]

Hi Neil, could you tell me what oil mist extraction you use on your Citizen machines. Thanks Shaun

[neil]

Hi shaun,

we use an Absolent extractor on ours. We had an oversize one fitted in case we ever add a Cool Blaster to the machine. But you defo need one cos the machine creates loads of oil mist.

Neil

[robsam]

Nice answering admin ! I am happy to be a part of this community. I am working on a Precision Machining project. Can you help me out in any way. I will be really thankful to you.


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Precision Machining

[neil]

Hi Robsam,

what kind of help do you need?

Neil