Warco Super Major Vario Milling Machine

[rrmrd66]

Here I give below my experience of purchasing the above.

20/1/17 Visit London Model Engineering show from North Yorkshire and place order with owner of Warco for Super Major Vario machine. ER32/R8 holder, wide tray and milling vice thrown in foc. Pay deposit. Agree March delivery.

21/2/17 Query why no order acknowledgement and receipt for deposit.

26/2/17 Ask for reply to above.

28/2/17 Agree to pay by direct debit in exchange for foc clamping kit. Confusion over foc vice. It is not the DH1 but a "Chinese' basic model. Agree to pay extra for DH1. Small discount agreed.

1/3/17 Amended invoice issued.

13/3/17 Machine delivered by local carrier. Notice later that packing case has hand written label which says Super Major Vario/DRO, but DRO is crossed out. Note machine manufactured in 2015. Send e mail stating no DRO

15/3/17 Chase up answer why no DRO as stated on invoice and paid for?

16/3/17 Offer received to a) come and collect the by now installed machine and fit DRO at works, or b) I fit DRO kit ( X and Y axis) myself and be given a 150 pound stg credit. I cannot agree with is and demand that Warco send an engineer to my workshop to fit DRO.

21/3 17 Chase up for a response.

24/3/17 Chase up for a response.

28/3/17 Informed after further chasing that engineer will visit . Date to be confirmed.

31/3/17 Chase again. Warco promise to get back with a date.

2/4/17 Still no date

5/4/17 I accept date offered of 24/4/17

24/4/17 Engineer arrives at 1800hrs and leaves at 2230hrs. Y axis fitted. X axis to be installed later in week.

28/4/17 Engineer fits X axis. All is now working.

3/5/17 ER32/R8 collet holder has no means of being held stationary whilst tightening the collet nut except by spanner on fixed nut on top of draw bar. This multiplies torque by x3.3. Spring pin in captive nut shears.

6/5/17 Warco send replacement draw bar but 7/16"UNF thread is not finished properly and will not screw into R8 holder. Order die from other supplier. Find out, when it arrives, it requires stock of 1 5/16" dia. which I do not have.

12/5/17 Milling head  rise and fall motor power feed fails.

24/5/17 Engineer visits and finds reduction gearbox on rise/fall motor has failure on output shaft.

30/5/17 I notice on Warco web site a photo of ER32/R8 collet holder with two spanner flats. This will overcome problem when tightening up chuck. Ask Warco to exchange for this type. Warco say this is non standard. I obtain one from another supplier. Problem solved.

2/6/17 Replacement gearbox arrives. It looks like a pre-used one and there is no input gear.

5/6/17 New reduction gearbox arrives. I fit it. All is now working satisfactorily.

I should state that at all times, with the exception of one person, all members of Warco staff were courteous and helpful.

I leave it to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading

Cheers

rrmrd66

 
 









 

[92220]

That is diabolical!!!!

[simplyloco]

I bought a Warco lathe many years ago - with faults on delivery -and kept it for just a few months until I concluded that it was made of compressed rice paper and bamboo shoots.
My S/H Austrian made EMCO Maximat V10P is still going strong and is as accurate now as when it was made.
You always get what you pay for!
John

[jem]

Very bad luck, I bought a lathe and Milling machine from Warco a couple of years ago, and had them delivered to Mallorca, and found their service second to none, the machines are perfect for me, and I have found Warco and their team could not be more helpfull. I still have my old Myford but it is not a patch on the Warco machinery, so I am a very satisfied customer. I have no connection with Warco except a very satisfied customer.

best wishes

Jem

[houstonceng]

I ordered a Warco 1327 lathe with accessories and a floor mounted pillar drill at the Guildford show in 1997. Because,the vice for the vertical slide wasn't available at the time of the delivery after I paid for the lathe Roger (Warco owner) said don't pay for the drill until the vice is delivered. After a few months of waiting, with no vice, I had decided to buy an A1S mill so I ordered that and, after discussion, Roger agreed to credit the cost of the vertical slide. I paid for the drill and, waited for the mill to be delivered. I'd ordered it with a 3 phase motor and VFD.as well as auto feed on the X axis. The latter wasn't on the mill when delivered, I didn't pay for the mill until Warco's technician had visited and fitted the missing bit. I was impressed by the quality of these Taiwanese made machines and the service I received from Warco, so had no hesitation in buying a horizontal bandsaw from the company.

My only complaint has been that a few e-.mails weren't answered back in 1997/98 due to some problems they had with the medium at that time, but telephone calls were promptly answered and I had a few face-2-face discussions with Roger at their HQ and at exhibitions when sorting out the deliveries and orders.

[Roger]

That's not a good experience, but in fairness, the machines are very cheap and it must me hard to make a living out of selling them. I'm not excusing bad service, but you won't get Rolls Royce customer service on a Lada. There's no way they made a profit out of your machine with two service calls. I can't believe many sales end up like this else they would go bust.

In my opinion, the quality is dire where it doesn't matter, and acceptable where it does. I've made some modifications to my Warco Lathe to make it work how I want, and I doubt if you could produce a better part on a Lathe that's ten times the price. And that's the point. The machines are made so that you and I can afford them, they're not held up to be masterpieces of Engineering.

My customer experience was fine, the Lathe arrived when they said it would, and it worked straight out of the crate.

[chiptim]

I bought a GH Major mill from an open day at Warco and found it took quite a long time to be delivered with little communication. But since then I have found their support and spares service to be good.

I think the issue is that they get so busy at trade shows and it takes them some time to catch up afterwards?

Tim

[rrmrd66]

Good evening to you all.

12 MONTHS WITH A SUPER MAJOR VARIO MILLER.

It is now just coming up to 12 months that I have had use of my Super Major Vario vertical milling machine, supplied by Warco, in my workshop.

I thought that you might be interested in my experience with it over that period of time.

Here it is at the Alexandra Palace ME exhibition in Jan 2017. Note the price.

A search of the net prior to buying revealed that you can strike lucky and get a reasonable condition Bridgeport for less that that. Playing safe and buying a fully restored example seems to be about the £5k-£6k mark.

fullsizeoutput_6dd by Malcolm HARWOOD, on Flickr

The post I made on the 15th June last year tells the story of it all not being plain sailing.

However by early June last year I was  already to start work with it.

You can read my build thread on the Don Young designed 5" gauge Hunslet NG quarry engine.

What follows is a list of what I have found using it more or 5days a week for a year.

You may well say "lucky so and so for being able to afford such a thing" and "I wish had one". I accept that I am fortunate to be able to afford such a thing and have a nice workshop to put it in. There are people though that do expect that when

forking out this kind of money that the machine is as good as the advertising blurb suggest it should be.

So here is my list of observations and minor gripes:

The unit with base weighs in at about 800 kgs. It arrives in two parts. One very heavy (the mill) the other very light (the base).

You need at least one, but preferably two, mates to manhandle it in to the workspace.

We had a standard garage up and over folding door to get through and then an inner roller shutter door into the workshop.

We removed the motor, for the powered head, to get through the first door. The roller shutter door was taller and no problem.

You may need to get/hire/steal a mini tele-loader, or proper roller sledges, to move the mill part about.You will certainly need a 1ton engine hoist which barely lifted it the mill high enough to be able to bolt the mill onto the base.

The base is basically a light weight welded sheet steel box. The theory of mass helping damp out noise and vibration did not occur to this designer. I intend to fill the cupboard, because that is all it is, with dense building blocks to add mass and help

reduce the "boom" that occurs when taking heavy cuts.

With a DTI the quill feed appears to be at 90º to the bed and with a digital inclinometer ( not supplied ) you can get zero/zero in x and y directions. However i am not certain about the head when powered up or down against some very accurate angle plates. I think there is a .020" lean it it that I cannot seem to eradicate.

The power feed on the x axis is good but very noisy (squirrel cage motor I guess?). It saves lots of hand wheel turning. The y axis has to be hand wound. An add on power feed is available which I may get eventually although the large drip tray will have to be cut to fit it.

I specified an R8 spindle which arrived without spanner flats. i was informed by the supplier that R8 spindle never had spanner flats which is odd because on the suppliers web site they are shown and AES Tools Glasgow supplied one the next day,

( You need spanner flats on the spindle otherwise you risk stripping the thread on top of the draw bar when tightening it up)

The table locks (Bristol type levers) are all a bit on the flimsy side. Maybe the next size up.

When lowering the head there is a point at which there is a disconcerting judder before continuing downwards smoothly. I have applied oil but assume that there is something wrong on the (apparently) hand scrapped slide ways.

There was (eventually) a DRO fitted to the x and y axes. This is good, in fact essential, but I feel that the y axis could be better. I must make new brackets for it sometime. i think there is a degree of lost motion somewhere.

The z axis is a vernier height gauge mounted on the quill feed which is accurate. But why oh why black figures on a dark grey background. With overhead lighting it is very difficult to read.

The lamp on the flexible arm is useless. It is never in the right place, gets hot and catches against the control box. A real gimmick to push the price up.

The +/- 45º swiveling head is held on a very inaccurate rotary spigot/joint with three nuts to undo. If  you are very clever (like me) you can almost have a disaster by turning it through 180º and draining the gearbox oil out onto the table.

There seems to be not many flat machined surfaces on which to place a magnetic base. All appear to be painted in "slippy" paint.

When releasing the quill height lock and the height is altered on the fine feed hand wheel it jumps by about 0.020". I have developed the odd habit of flicking the locking lever twice against its end stop and then turning the hand feed!

The optional extra (UK designed and built, say no more) AH-1 precision milling vice is well worth buying, as is a real  Vertex (Taiwan) HV6 rotary table (beware of blatant imitations). Both two nice pieces of kit.

Anyhow, as they say, now I have got that off my chest I will go and have my cup of Horlicks and put my tiara on for the Royal Wedding tomorrow,

Good night to you all

Malcolm.

[springcrocus]

A good review, Malcolm, and one that will surely assist anyone contemplating the purchase of one. Thanks for making the effort.

Regards, Steve

[jem]

thanks very much Malcolm, this makes very interesting reading I bought a Warco GH milling drilling machine, 3 years ago, I am very pleased with it, but like yours It has short comings, The head tilted forward, so I had to shim under the front of the column, which seems to have sorted that out. I took the safety shield out as it got in the way, and hung a big electric motor on the back of the column for rising and lowering the head. I built my own stand, so have no problem with vibration, their stands are very flimsy affairs, on My Warco lathe, I welded angle iron on the upright corners of the stands , which made them much more sturdy. I dont use a magnetic base, I bolted a block on the side of the head, which holds a rod, that can slide up or down, and attach my clock to that, which works very well. I dont like tilting the head, as it is very difficult to get it back to vertical, but I wonder if we could attach a laser light to the head such that it lights a point on the roof above the mill when the head is vertical?

best wishes

Jem

[rrmrd66]

May 19, 2018 16:12:04 GMT springcrocus said:

A good review, Malcolm, and one that will surely assist anyone contemplating the purchase of one. Thanks for making the effort.

Regards, Steve

My pleasure Steve. Thanks for the kind words

Malcolm

[rrmrd66]

May 19, 2018 16:46:30 GMT jem said:

thanks very much Malcolm, this makes very interesting reading I bought a Warco GH milling drilling machine, 3 years ago, I am very pleased with it, but like yours It has short comings, The head tilted forward, so I had to shim under the front of the column, which seems to have sorted that out. I took the safety shield out as it got in the way, and hung a big electric motor on the back of the column for rising and lowering the head. I built my own stand, so have no problem with vibration, their stands are very flimsy affairs, on My Warco lathe, I welded angle iron on the upright corners of the stands , which made them much more sturdy. I dont use a magnetic base, I bolted a block on the side of the head, which holds a rod, that can slide up or down, and attach my clock to that, which works very well. I dont like tilting the head, as it is very difficult to get it back to vertical, but I wonder if we could attach a laser light to the head such that it lights a point on the roof above the mill when the head is vertical?

best wishes

Jem

Hi Jem

Thanks for the comments.

I think I need to shim the main column to get rid of my .020" taper.

The additional "clock rod" sounds a good idea.

Bought one of those tiny Chinese mag. bases from RDG at Doncaster Exhb. which is small enough to cling to the spindle nose. That has made clocking a bit easier.

(I always think "shall I bother to clock it, or not" and then an image of Roger appears over my shoulder saying "have you clocked it yet?")

The vertical laser is intriguing. How would you establish the vertical datum on the ceiling of the workshop?

regards

Malcolm

[jem]

Hi Malcolm,

A blob of paint! Yes Roger is always looking over our shoulder now !!

The laser on the ceiling might also help in making the column vertical, if you put that in now, and then shim, the spot on the ceiling will move, so if you find the shimming is too little or to much, the spot on the ceiling should give you a guide as to how much you should reshim by do you think?

the clock rod I find very useful, as it is out of the way when not in use, and very positive when in use.

let us know how you get on re shimming please

best wishes

Jem

[jon38r80]

I have a wm16 mill and various other bits and pieces bought for my lathe (not Warco) and have found them reasonable quality for the price. Nearly all have needed a little fettling to get them to work to my satisfaction. The biggest difficulty I have had with them is their attention to email communication. This is very poor but have found that phone communication very quickly sorts things out.