Clausing Klondia Mills.....

How do these mills stack up compared to a Bridgeport? Any and all comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance,
Ben H

We have 3 of them. An FV-1 and 2 FV-300'S. They're very good machines, maybe better than Bridgeports. I think they're similar to Lagun. Our's need varible speed head work done periodicaly and we've had 2 tables reground due to sagging. Our machines get a lot of use though. Keep them cleaned,oiled and adjusted and they'll stack up very well.

In the mid 1990's a young computer nerd wrote an CNC program called One Step that you could run on Windows 3.2. All you had to do was draw the part and tell it what tool it was using, the computer figured the rest out and ran the machine.

I did the mechanical grunt-work of the retrofits.

His Demonstrator machine was a Kondia. We ran the hell out of it many times with the spindle going at top speed.

We also took it to King of Prussia, PA and Springfield, Mass. to the shows. As you might think, moving tends to perturb machinery.

The Kondia took a lickin' and kept right on tickin'.

During my Retrofit Days, I took a variety of imported mills of that type apart. I found nothing about any of them that I could complain about and some things I really liked.

We didn't do any Jet or Grizzley or Enco stuff, but these were Spanish and the better Taiwanese mills sold through industrial suppliers.

While many of the import mills have lost their similarity to the Bridgeport's appearance, they are still of the same mechanical design.

I still have some screws and graduated collar sets hanging around here and I have to measure them to tell which is a B'port and which is an import.

The name doesn't seem to mean much anymore, there are only three things to look for in a used one, Condition, Condition and Condition.

The local trade school has several Kondia machines sold under the Hurco brand name. They are almost 20 yrs old and still taking a licking. And don't for a minuit think that students can't work a machine hard and put it up wet.

I personally like the older ones with the deeper table and bridgeport power feed units on them. And a strickingly pretty blue color to boot.

Charles

Ben:

I had a Kondia before I bought my present CNC machine. The old Kondia, for my part, is a workhorse. I did have to replace some of the drive parts and the spindle bearings, but it had done a lot of work. Much more iron than a comparable Bridgeport.

JRW

Thay are as good or better than Bridgeports

Hello i recently bought a FV-1 mill in good condition, i'm realitive new to milling
and One thing i found out is most tooling is for a SK-40(iso-40) spindle.
Now is the FV-1 equipped with a SK-30.
Did anybody ever made a SK-40 spindle for this mill or did anybody did the conversion ?

Thanks
Marcel

Do you still have your FV 300s in operation? Have you changed out the power mill servos? I have a problem with the boards in the drives on mine is why i am asking

Rod MI said:

Thay are as good or better than Bridgeports

Click to expand...

We have two and yes there better than a Bridgeport, in fact the one Kondia replaced a veri-drive Bridgeport.