Thread: H & F machines in schools

Originally Posted by new_guy90

oh and i think they are made in Korea so you can skip the China crap

Nope Taiwan

And at least two manufacturers of that model in Taiwan at that and three different sellers (600 Group, Whitelaw machinery and CNC Machinery Sales).... The one CNC Machinery Sales sells is better... But then I have to say that

Originally Posted by .RC.

Nope Taiwan

And at least two manufacturers of that model in Taiwan at that and three different sellers (600 Group, Whitelaw machinery and CNC Machinery Sales).... The one CNC Machinery Sales sells is better... But then I have to say that

still far better than from China the ones i used were from Whitelaw machinery good machines they still dont rank up to our Russian and Takisawa lathe (.RC. i know you can spell it ) but they get very close

I attend NMIT in Melbourne (Heidelberg Campus) and they purchased a number of H & F Lathes.
I don't use these lathes as they have far better Colchesters at the other end, but the people i know that have run them don't complain that their out of whack - yet.

I know that the purchase was based on value for money. Whether they got the best value for their dollar is to be seen, but i suspect H & F are seen as a stable supplier with support - continued spares and can be called if big problems arise.

Originally Posted by seafurymike

but i suspect H & F are seen as a stable supplier with support - continued spares and can be called if big problems arise.

You mean like possible asbestos contanmination? I wonder if the department of education got the same letter as the lathe owners on this forum?
Stuart

Our school has received nil notification from H&F over this asbestos issue.These lathes are 3 year old maybe too recent for asbestos ?

The person who purchased our lathes did not have a back ground guided by experience in the long term use of lathes.He had to set the shop up and worked from a catalogue and he did it with out any help or advice as at the time there were not the appropriate staff to assist him.

Given the level of defects found and the casual attitude of H&F towards the serious nature and number of these defects my HOD and I are extremely disillusioned with these people .

It won't surprise you to find out that we will not choose them as a machinery vendor for future purchases.
Surely, they have been in business long enough to apply some sort of quality assurance/ quality control processes which should apply if a customer has spent nearly $100,000 with them.It seems machinery is just sent out with out any checks.

Its not just the money required to fix defective equipment ,but the loss of availability of the tool /machine.

Some students will try to manipulate the machinery being offline as an excuse for their own poor performance and lack of organisation. The are real dramas in deploying the students who,some of whom are trying to complete a project assessment and whatever it is is offline.

The notion having spare parts available was not correct too,as I have had to replace the thread end on a HM52 DRAWBAR (I think that was the model) BECAUSE THE SPARE PART Was 4 MONTHS AWAY.

I purchased a 350mm bandsaw that was unusable as the blade guide was not even parallel to the saw blade - in fact, 15 degrees out. One of the wheels was out of round by 2mm.
This was 15 years back and not much has changed I fear.

Only yesterday I passed up a H&F Horizontal cut band saw for what seemed a good price as I don't have the time or patience to rebuild yet another of their products.

Bear in mind if you purchase a machine and there is a defect, you have to get it back to the vendor at your cost.

Also consider tooling .Is it generic to the supplier or can you buy the standards spares and replacement at at machinery tooling supplier?

Next time I can afford a machinery purchase, it will come from Taiwan,even though it may cost 20% more.

Grahame

To the guru of all things metal (Grahame), who would you consider using as a supplier of machinery for schools as our BSM has said there is a little remaining cash that can be listed for man arts. The amount is not huge but it is exciting all the same. Damien. Woodford P-10

Hi Goodwoody
600 Group, Whitelaw machinery and CNC Machinery Sales all as listed before are all good bets. Talk to these people they may do deals.

My old school had a lot of JET stuff which seemed very robust.

The net is a pretty good tool for this and its not too hard to list what you want and go through the listings.

Specs are the thing to go buy on, who has spares , what are the spares carried,how long spares will take to arrive.
These are the questions to ask.get the answers in writing too.
PS not a guru- not even close -I have not reached self realisation as yet.
cheers
Grahame

I can empathise with all who have bought a cheap chinese machine. I must add though that the BS4 metal bandsaw I bough from H&F several years ago is still going strong as the day I got it. I use it regularly to cut through 4" round bar, one of the best things they sell in my opinion. Having said that I was totally disappointed with the HM10 mini mill I got from them in 1999. The power controller died after 12 months , just out of warrenty (the gears went before that but differnt story). after $150 on a replacement board I dicovered that the original one has a dry solder joint around an inductor lead that arc'd burning the copper pad completly away. Faulty workmanship. The second one blew up for no apparent reason so I built my own and that's worked ever since.

Originally Posted by Swarfmaker1

The power controller died after 12 months

Call me old fashioned, but I don't see a compelling reason to have electronics anywhere on a machine tool, for my limited uses anyway. As well as the inherent reliability issues, they detract from the nice "all mechanical engineering" looks.

Jordan

Originally Posted by nadroj

Call me old fashioned,

OK....your old fashioned....

what we can with electronics is great....makes for so much more productivity, and certainly makes most task that have and use electronics easier to accomplish

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

Hi Goodwoody
600 Group, Whitelaw machinery and CNC Machinery Sales all as listed before are all good bets. Talk to these people they may do deals.

My old school had a lot of JET stuff which seemed very robust.

T

Those companies all sell cheap stuff as well. H&F sell higher quality machine like the Dashin Champion which is a Colchester Triumph 2000 clone..

I actually could never understand why the school Graham works at bought such big lathes to begin with... Something like the taiwanese H&F AL1000D would have been adequate and good (also sold by other businesses like whitelaw)

<I actually could never understand why the school Graham works at bought such big lathes to begin with.>

The difference is that some schools operate from a Manual Arts workshop type environment, whereas our has a super beaut facility that has the footprint the size of a Olympic swimming pool.Basically is is a small factory and students as much as possible within Qld Ed.rules are treated like they are working in a factory. The funding was raised locally -ie not Federal monies, so we are very conscious of that.

It is a shared arrangement between ourselves and the local community. We start our first adult welding classes next Monday night

Our shop equipment is catering for students to progress on to full blown engineering apprenticeships ,therefore the thinking was to provide full blown equipment they would likely be using.

The other reason is that bigger machines might stand up better to being crashed due to a more robust construction.


The concept is sound but there was always was some fine tuning needed to be done around the edges.

Kids in the main don't care a rats about equipment and even abuse things like digital verniers.Dropping them and even grinding over the top of them is no bother to them and they can't understand why i become irate about it.

Every one of them has the glass screen cracked which lets the weather in and the unit fails shortly after.In 2011 the digitals will be replaced by cheap manual verniers
say 150 x .02 and kids will be forced to read them- no more digitals.

Next years cherubs will be asked to further prove their full knowledge and understanding of the lathe,its processes and its equipment and accessories first before starting one up.

Last years mob did a lathe competency licence but failed the chuck key operation badly .This years crew were better but not perfect ,suffering a major accident-major but no amputation.

The thing is, anyone working on a lathe must have certain level of metal agility and sadly some cherubs have not got it.

They may not get a competency to operate a lathe, but will go home with full use of hands and fingers.

Hope that explains it better.

Grahame

The thing is, anyone working on a lathe must have certain level of metal agility and sadly some cherubs have not got it.

Should this be reading mental ability.

Its the typing fingers, I tell you, they have not got agility either.

Yep mental agility.

My bad!

Grahame