Fadal VMC40 CNC mill. Mine is a 1984, making it one of the first ones made. This was one of the first wave of CNC machines made and priced for a smaller job sh

Fadal VMC40 CNC mill. Mine is a 1984, making it one of the first ones made. This was one of the first wave of CNC machines made and priced for a smaller job shop environment. It's not large (axis travels are 20" X, 16" Y) and it's not fast by modern standards (slow travel, max 10k rpm spindle speed). However, it's easy to use, not over-complicated, rigid with box ways, and DIY repairable. There are several places to get affordable parts and support. I have yet to encounter a component that is "no longer available," a common occurrence on other machinery. I've had a specialist out to inspect it when I got the machine, but other than that I've been able to fix and maintain it easily. Besides, very little has gone wrong with it, and I started running it hard straight out of a 20 year hibernation. The control electronics are built with a backplane design that makes it extremely simple to swap and upgrade components. The control boards themselves are made with all through-hole components, making board-level repairs easier. I upgraded the main control board from a '84 version to a '95 version in about 30 minutes (gaining speed and a lot of UI improvements). If I wanted, I could retrofit a fully modern control system in a couple hours. If you're not in the industry this may not sound significant, but if you're familiar with CNC machines this is huge for prolonging the life of a machine. For comparison, older Haas control boards are known to fail and the only current recourse is to pay Haas about $20k for a full retrofit by a factory tech. The interface is text based and runs on a CRT but it's incredibly simple, ergonomic and easy to learn. Discoverability is excellent, with built-in documentation and useful error messages. If Siemens and Fanuc CNC controllers are emacs and vim, Fadal is nano. If the battery backup goes bad, I can restore the control parameters using a human-readable menu with meaningful variable names in about 5 minutes from memory. On my Mazak lathe, this takes hours of entering hex codes into numbered fields. In comparison to other machines I've used, the Fadal feels like it's made to be used by machinists, not gatekept by factory service techs and expensive training courses. The worst part of the machine is that it has a total loss mist lubrication system for the spindle, which requires added ventilation otherwise it will fill the shop up with oil mist. I would also like a full enclosure, which mine doesn't have but later ones do. But other than that it's incredibly resilient, high quality and simple machine, the likes of which simply aren't being made anymore.