- In this week's Pierson Workholding Q&A,
I get the question, Jay, should I buy a Tormach,
a Haas Toolroom Mill, a mini mill or a VF-2.
Wow. (phone ringing)
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Okay. So the questions of the week is Jay,
I'm starting a business and trying to decide if I should buy
a Tormach 1100
or move up to a Haas Toolroom Mill,
Haas Mini Mill, or a full-on VF series.
Ahhh, that is a big question.
Let me give you maybe not so big of an answer,
what I would say, first of all,
I've never owned a Tormach
I've communicated with the Tormach team, a great company,
great products making machining accessible to hobbyists,
to legitimate business owners just getting started,
and really machine shops that just want to bring on
the capacity of a smaller machine without the expense.
And so what Tormach has brought to the industry,
I think is great. Now, when I got started the,
I guess the least expensive and most successful version
besides a Bridgeport was the Haas Mini Mill.
I have my original Haas Mini Mill that I bought in 2002.
It's a model year 2000, bought it used
terrible time to start a company,
great time to buy used equipment.
So right in the middle of a recession,
I didn't know that at the time.
That's why I got such a great deal on like a year,
year and a half old machine, it was almost half price.
So I still own that machine.
I've also owned a Haas TM-3P.
And of course I'm up to 3, 4, 5
VF series mills
and probably a sixth one coming soon.
So here's what I would say
from a general business perspective, the,
I would do whatever leads you to not get into debt. Now,
if you remember in last week's episode about business,
I said, if you are getting into debt,
you're building someone else's business.
So I like the idea of going cheap using it to your,
to its maximum potential, selling it,
rolling that money over into a new machine.
That's exactly what I've done.
So I would not own my Haas Mini Mill right now.
If I were not emotionally attached to it,
it stick around, it stand, I've listed it for sale.
Then, you know, didn't have serious buyers.
Let's just sing out onto it. It's still a great machine.
So once you get into the Haas line,
they're all really good machines.
Now the product line below the mini series,
I would say is the tool room series. Very basic machine.
I owned one for seven years, worked great.
It's such a slow machine. First of all, 6,000 RPM,
4,000 rapids, I'm sorry, 400 rapids,
400 max cutting.
So it is not a fast machine at all, but I'll tell you what.
I made a lot of money with that machine.
It was also really inexpensive.
It was the same travels as a Haas VF-3,
which at that time in the business could not afford
a full blown VF-3, and so the mini, I'm sorry,
the TM was a perfect addition to the company.
I did take out a loan to get it.
I remember specifically the payment,
$864 a month for five years. I hated being in debt.
I hated writing that check,
but I didn't have money to just cashflow or buy it outright.
And so that was the right decision at the time,
having sold that machine and upgrading to a VF-4SS,
VF-4SS oh, let me, let me back up and say this.
This is, this is my observation.
The jump from Tormach to a TM
is an equal jump from the TM
to a mini mill, mini mill to a VF
and a VF to a VF super speed.
I feel those are pretty equal jumps. As far as speed.
We don't play speed as a big importance.
Believe it or not in this company, like last week's video,
I value the process. You can like, for example,
gosh, I should have told the story last week, but,
I have a friend that his machine shop will be really good,
make parts, and then they would sit on a cart
for three or four days.
Then they would say, hey, what are these parts doing?
Then they would go ship them.
And then they'd wait two or three weeks to invoice them.
Businesses are here to make money. If parts are sitting,
it doesn't matter what machine you have. If they're sitting.
You totally erased the speed gains of that machine.
If you have an invoice for two or three weeks,
you are stretching out your own paycheck.
So we are far more
interested in the entire start
to finish process from when a customer orders a product
to when the customer receives the product
and everything in between, that's on us.
It is rarely a speed issue.
It's always 90% of the time, a process issue.
That's how we could make so much profit with a simple,
slow TM machine.
The reason we jumped up to a VF-4SS obviously
we can afford it days,
but we wanted the 12,000 RPM spindle because we make
a vacuum chucks on it, and we do.
I think we did three miles of eighth inch wide,
a hundred thousand steep slot. Now three miles,
whatever, that's not a big deal, but in machine terms,
that's a lot of slots. And so when we can go from
8,000 RPM to 12,000, obviously that's a 50% boost.
On the TM, 6,000 was just not cutting it.
So we had a spindle speeder that we would spin it.
I think it was 4,000 RPM, and it was a five time multiplier.
So we'd get up to 20,000 RPM,
but those speeders are not rigid and any faster than about
40 inches a minute. And it would start to deflect.
Now with the VF-4SS, we cut at the max speed 12,000 RPM
at a hundred inches a minute. So, that is awesome.
The speed boost is nice. It's more accurate than the TM.
There's not a lot of close torches on their vacuum chucks,
other than the grinding,
which that's super dialed in and flat,
but it's a nice upgrade to have also the VF-4
has a 50 inch wide table instead of a 40.
So all those things kinda kind of went into it, but I would,
I would go back to my original point.
Don't go into debt to buy the best machine,
the fastest machine, the fanciest machine,
the machine that's gonna look great on Instagram and
gonna get you kudos.
Your ego just is not worth putting the financial integrity
of your business at risk.
So I love the idea of buying what you can afford.
If you can barely afford it, then get alone, pay it off,
roll it over, roll it up.
Grow your business.
Big question. Now from a specs standpoint,
I would definitely say the mini mill is better than a TM.
TM cuts a lot of corners in,
in trying to bring the overall price of the machine down.
Such a funny thing.
I'm gonna to show you a clip here and
at least see how on this casting there's three bolts.
My TM to save money.
This middle bolt right here was not installed in the column.
Now. I don't know why they did that.
The tech said, yep, well, that's kind of
Haas this way of saving money wherever they can.
That's fine because did that third bolt
add a lot of rigidity on this slow machine that doesn't cut,
it doesn't, it's not meant for
it's a seven and a half horsepower machine.
It's not meant for heavy cuts. So,
I'm gonna leave that up to the pros.
It's just a funny thing and pretty consistent indicator
of the corners that were cut and the components that were
omitted with the TM series.
Now, the mini mill, I love the form factor.
I love the fact that it works off single phase power.
I had my TM in one to two locations
that only had single phase power.
That's great, three phase power.
You get ah, one of those converters,
or you have to move.
TMs and mini mills are both operated off single phase power,
but when you jump up to the VF series,
it is night and day between the TM and mini mill. It is,
they're such more rugged machines. Of course,
the spindle you have from seven and a half
to 30 horsepower peak, the, the accuracy, the speed,
it's just, everything is just dialed in and polished.
I'm a value buyer.
And I think Haas machines in general offer the most value
over other brands.
So if you liked what you just heard
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so until next time, go innovate your production.
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