Previously we showed off our Citizen Cincom L32 Swiss Lathe. We love this machine, but we DID recently experience a huge error with the L32 that cost us big. The fact that this error could even happen has challenged our original review, so we decided to do an update!
Video Transcript:
“All right, everybody. Welcome back to Kremin Inc. I am back at our Citizens L32 Type 12, and I’m going to update the review I previously did. If you haven’t seen the review yet, click the link below in the description. Check it out, come on back, and we’ll give it an update.
All right, guys. In my last review I gave this machine four stars.
We’re gonna take this one and we’re gonna throw it away. We’re going down to three stars. Let me tell you why.
One of the highlights of this machine is this B-axis right here. This was one of the highlights on the machine when we bought it. It gives us full control operationally from zero to 120 degrees. It also has live tooling on the b-axis, so we can mill, we can drill, we can do just about anything. We come to find out: these B-axis’s are supposed to be greased!
If we look real close here, we’ve got two grease fittings. We got one right here, and we got one on this side over here. Unbeknownst to us, these are supposed to be packed with grease at some type of frequency.
Now I know what you’re saying: “Mike, you should have known that!” Probably right. We should have known that. All these machines come with manuals. They usually come with these big books like this. Like this one from our A20. The L32 machine comes with a CD.
When’s the last time you saw a computer that took a CD?
So we have to take our engineer, we go over to the local library, we kick the kid off the Commodore 64, and we put the CD in. We do an extensive search of a thousand of pages on this CD, and we come to find out there’s a little note on page 22 that says grease when needed.
Grease when needed? When is grease needed? Apparently it was needed before we blew out all the bearings in the B-axis.
Don’t make the same mistakes that we made. Check out your B-axis. Keep an eye on the grease fittings. Make sure they’re packed full. Do it at a regular frequency, and ask your dealer what that should be just to verify. The repairs on these [machines] are expensive, so stay on top of it.”