Great support from Little Machine Shop

[rcfreak177]

G'day,

I thought that I would post a message here in regards to the positive support that Little Machine Shop offers.

Here is the story (in short)

Approx 12 months ago I purchased a cnc spindle control board from LMS for my SX3.

I had the part shipped to Australia. Yesterday I fitted the part to my machine and could not get it to work properly. 10 hrs of clutching at straws :wall:

I contacted LMS late last night Perth time (business hours in USA) with the problem. Within 1 hour I had a reply from Chris with a few questions which I promptly answered, we came to the conclusion the wrong part had been shipped to me.

This specific part was new out when I purchased it and also was the only one on the market for the application.

This was new to all of us trying to get spindle control via Mach3 on the SX3 mill. The learning curve was long and gave us all grey hair. The difference between the 2 parts is extremely minimal on a visual basis.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I woke up this morning to find LMS had shipped the correct part to me free of charge also with an upgrade.
I also can keep the other part which suits a SX2 mill.

"How is that for service"

I know a lot of you guys use LMS already and also know some tooling or parts can be sourced cheaper elsewhere.

The question is "do the alternatives offer this type of after sales service???"

Here is a link to the website for the people that don't know of them.
they are very down to earth and helpful.

http://littlemachineshop.com/

Cheers,
Baz.

 

[Tin Falcon]

The question is "do the alternatives offer this type of after sales service?"

when I purchased my mini lathe from grizzly many years ago the chip tray arrived bent. . A phone call to grizzly and a new one was shipped and I was told to keep the old one.
So yes other companies do provide excellent service as well.


As far as LMS it is a family business Carl and Chris Started the business because they or at least Chris were frustrated with the lack of availabilty of accesorories and aftermarket support or the mini mill and mini lathe. selling lathes and mills is actually a new thing for them. they have the factory build the machines with the improvements and mods that most folks want and should be on the lathe in the first place.

I see and talk to these guys one a year at the Cabin fever show. I usually buy something from them at the show. .

I like to see good sound family businesses succeed.
Tin

 

[rcfreak177]

Hi Tin,

Yep there are plenty of businesses that offer great after sales service, i have several of them, some in the US, some in the UK and a few here in Australia.

We hear on the media that things in the US are still fairly tough going after the GFC.

Here in Oz the economy is booming so our prices are extremely high, unfortunately there is a lot of companies that are on the get rich quick train.
This prompts us guy's to shop offshore quite often.

I like to do my bit by buying from several places around the globe as well as from here and share the profits around a bit as well as getting myself a respectable deal.

I have heard that Grizzly are great to deal with, Thats good to hear. Shame they don't operate here in OZ.

I come from a family of small business that have several times had the chance to become large. My father (the proprietor) refused to go big because usually the small family business is usually the ones that run on honesty and quality of service which brings customers back.

RDG Tools and Chronos engineering supplies in the UK are a couple of other good ones as well as CDCO in the US, I use all of them.

Cheers,
Baz.

 

[RonGinger]

As far as LMS it is a family business Carl and Chris Started the business because they or at least Chris were frustrated with the lack of availabilty of accesorories and aftermarket support or the mini mill and mini lathe.

Chris told me a slightly different story. He and Carl were software guys, and started the development of an 'E store' software package. They needed a test case, so they used the Little Machine Shop idea. By the time they got it all implemented the market for E Store software was poor, and they figured they had all the effort into LMS they might as well launch that.

I agree that they do a great job and help support a lot of machines. You cite Grizzly as a good company, try to get a replacement part from Harbor Freight, or Homier, or any of the other cheap importers. LMS is much better that most.

I felt really bad for them this year at NAMES. They shipped their stock for both Cabin Fever and NAMES to Cabin Fever, then packed it all for NAMES. Somehow the truck got screwed up and didn't get to NAMES. So they had no stock and had to take orders and give free shipping at NAMES. They probably lost all their profit on those sales, but they did it anyway.