About Used-CNC Machines and ‘Official-Pilgrimages’

I was away at Mumbai and Rajkot for few days last week to pick up a Used CNC Horizontal Machining Center for a customer. We did find one in Rajkot, a Kitamura CNC HMC of 1991, with a Pallet size of 300X300mm for Rs. 11 Lakhs. I usually do not accept such assignments of inspecting and recommending used CNC Machines because of the uncertainties involved in the performance of such old Machines for which I may be unnecessarily blamed at a later date. But when customers do buy second-hand machines on their own I do accept to commission the machines for them. And this is a part of my regular business. However I had to oblige this particular customer because he is well known to me and he understands my stand on this issue.

CNC machining became very popular all over the country since late eighties because of high returns but nowadays it has become extremely competitive with marginal returns. Because of the sprawl of CNC machine shops all over the country and specifically in each and every industrial area of the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad the machine hour rates are the lowest now and are gradually coming down. It is due to these factors that all small and medium scale industries here are buying used CNC Machines. It keeps their overheads and machine hour rates much lower compared to buying a new Machine. But there are all sorts of risks and problems involved in this approach. The used machine geometrical accuracies are not satisfactory and there are frequent breakdowns for some reason or the other. Some of the accuracies can be corrected and some just cannot be improved because of the high level of wear and tear on the Machine. In some cases when the Machines are procured without testing, the CNC Systems, Drives, Automatic Tool Changers, Automatic Pallet Changers etc., do not function resulting in heavy expenditure and loss of time to set right the machines. 

These used CNC Machines are available mostly in Mumbai, Bangalore, Rajkot and Chennai. They are brought into the country by second-hand machine dealers and kept on display in very large warehouses. These machines are picked up by the dealers mostly from European countries, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea, where they are sold due to high maintenance costs, inaccuracies or due to outdated performance levels. In India most of these machines are sold to customers in as is where is condition without powering them up and demonstrating their functions and performance. Indian customers take risks and buy them out of desperation. If the machine performs well with or without due repairs they prosper and if it turns out to be a sick and bothersome machine; they suffer.

This business trip turned out to be a very pious one for me. While at Rajkot I went on pilgrimage for a day to the Temple city of Somnath. Lord Shiva’s Somnath temple is the first of 12 Jyothirlingas in the country. The temple is a huge and grand one located adjacent to the Arabian Sea with the sea touching the temple boundaries. There are many other sacred places I visited here; the most prominent among them being, Bhalka Tirtha, Triveni Ghat, Balramjika Gufa, Panch Pandav Gufa, Suraj Mandir, Lakshminarayan Temple and Gita Mandir.

Bhalka Tirtha is the place where Lord Krishna was mistaken for a deer and wounded by an arrow while sleeping in a deer skin. Triveni Ghat is the confluence of three holy rivers namely Kapil, Hiran and Saraswathi. Lord Krishna is said to have visited this Triveni Sangam after getting injured.

Many of my official tours in the past have also given me an opportunity to visit very important temples in the country. While in Trichy; a number of times, I visited Srirangam, Tanjore and Madurai. While at Pondicherry, I visited Chidambaram a number of times. At Dehradun, I visited Rishikesh, Haridwar and Badrinath in the Himalayas. I may have visited Calcutta more than twenty times and every time I have visited and prayed at Kalighat. When I went to Cochin on official work, I visited Sri Ananthapadmanabhaswamy temple at Trivandrum and from there to Kanyakumari. Similarly I went to many other sacred places during my official trips to different towns and cities. May be sometime later I shall post some blogs on some of these interesting ‘Official-Pilgrimages’!