Used Giddings & Lewis Machines We Buy

Who Builds Giddings & Lewis Machines Today

Giddings & Lewis is a brand of Fives, a Paris-based industrial engineering group, and new machines under the name come from Fives Giddings & Lewis in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Fives calls the Fond du Lac company a manufacturer of horizontal machining centers, horizontal boring mills and vertical turning centers. In the United States, Fives Machining Systems, Inc., part of Fives' High Precision Machines division, is the OEM for both the Cincinnati and the Giddings & Lewis machine tool brands.

The plant is still the old one. Fives says it is modernizing the historic campus, removing older office sections at the corner of Johnson and Doty streets, and adding a large gantry machine from sister company Liné Machines, with production planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. Whether your G&L is an old manual table mill or a recent VTC, it traces back to that one Wisconsin site.

From a Fond du Lac Machine Shop to Fives

Fives does not publish a Giddings & Lewis history, so this part comes from two outside records. The International Directory of Company Histories, reprinted on FundingUniverse, traces the company to 1859, when John Bonnell opened a machine shop in Fond du Lac; the Wisconsin Historical Society's record of the plant tells the same origin. George Giddings and O. F. Lewis bought the business around 1880, and in 1895 it became The Giddings & Lewis Manufacturing Company, then making sawmill machinery and steam engines.

Horizontal boring, drilling and milling machines arrived during World War I, and much of the factory complex standing today dates to 1929. The historical society record notes the Numericord Controller of 1955, an early Giddings & Lewis numerical control, and the 1982 sale of the company to AMCA International. Fives bought the Giddings & Lewis complex in 2013; American Machinist reported in March 2013 that Fives had agreed to acquire MAG Americas, the unit holding the Giddings & Lewis, Cincinnati and Forest-Liné lines.

Giddings & Lewis Lines Fives Builds Now

Fives' boring mill page says a one-piece rigid machining platform is characteristic of all Giddings & Lewis boring mills, and it splits the range into floor-type machines with a live spindle or a rectangular ram (FT and FTR), the automated MC Series with a dual pallet shuttle, the modular PT Series, the RT Series with its built-in contouring rotary table, and the lower-cost T-Bed with a 10 ton hydrostatic table. On the turning side, the V Series and the larger VTC Series vertical lathes share an infinitely-adjustable cross rail, and the VTC handles parts up to 5 m in diameter.

Some of those names also turn up in this hub's listings, such as RT1250 and RT1600 boring mills and VTC-1600 turning centers. Table mills such as the 70-H5-T and 65-D4-T, the G60, the PC40 and PC50 and the 340-T and 350-T are not on Fives' current pages; they are earlier Giddings & Lewis machines, and they are common in the listings here.

Fives' Current Giddings & Lewis Lines

The Giddings & Lewis machines on Fives' boring mill and vertical turning pages, with how Fives describes each:

From Fives' boring mill and turning pages, which list only current machines. Older G&L lines, such as the -T table mills, the G60 and the PC series, are not on these pages.

What Is in Our Giddings & Lewis Listings

The G&L book runs 584 listings, and boring mills are the largest typed machine group in it at 209: 126 CNC boring mills, 42 tagged HBM, 35 more horizontal boring mills, and 6 vertical boring mills. Machining and milling rows come to 55, spread over 18 horizontal machining centers, 16 vertical machining centers, 12 gantry and portal mills, 7 milling machines, one 5-axis center and one general machining center. Turning is 24 rows: 16 vertical turret lathes, 5 lathes, 3 turning centers. Past that sit 20 drilling rows, 18 rotary tables, 12 automation and pallet systems and 12 grinding rows. Those typed categories cover 350 of the 584 listings; the other 234 listings sit outside them, 216 of those carrying a Metal Cutting label rather than a machine type. Across the whole hub we carry 387 distinct model designations, and the listings that record a build year run from 1969 to 2026.

70-Series Table-Type Boring Mills and the 65-Series

Table-type horizontal boring mills are what G&L is known for, and the 70-series is the biggest model roll-up in this hub: 37 listings lead with 70 or 70A. The designations that repeat most are 70-H5-T, 70-D5-T, 70-H6-T, 70A-DP5-T and 70A-DP4-T. The 65-series adds 20 more listings and carries the same -T suffix pattern in 65-D4-T, 65-E4-T and 65-H5-T. Between them the 70 and 65 blocks lead 57 of the 584 listings. Shorter strings out of the same block show up too: DP5-T and DP5T, H6 and H6T, H70, 70D5 and 15HS. On the category side, 209 of the 584 listings are filed under one of the four boring mill headings, and 77 of those are tagged horizontal specifically, 42 as HBM and 35 as horizontal boring mills. If your data plate reads 70-something, send the exact string rather than the family, since the same designation reaches us spelled more than one way.

VTC Turning Centers, MC and HMC Machining Centers

Turning and milling make up the other side of the book. VTC is the second biggest roll-up at 23 listings, counting VTC together with VTC1600 and VTC1000M, and VTC-60 is the most repeated string in it, with VTC-3000 behind. The sell page types the VTC line as vertical turning centers and lists 48-inch, 60-inch and 72-inch VTLs among what we buy; the category field separately carries 16 vertical turret lathe rows, 5 lathes and 3 turning centers. On the milling side MC rolls up to 18 across MC, MC70 and MC60, and HMC to 13 across HMC and HMC410, against 18 horizontal machining center rows and 16 vertical machining center rows. G60 comes up often enough to name: 18 listings lead with G60, G60FX or G60TX, written G60-FX, G60-T and G 60T as well, with G50 on four more. Those are designations in the listings, not a machine class we type.

Rotary Tables, Drilling Machines and the Long Tail

Past the headline lines the book gets specific. There are 18 rotary table rows, and 11 listings lead with RT, RT1250 or RT1600, with 350RT alongside them; the sell page types the RT series as rotary-table boring mills. Drilling is 19 drilling and tapping center rows plus one deep hole machine, and the Winslowmatic line accounts for 8 listings across two spellings of the name in our titles, Winslomatic and Winslowmatic, with Bickford leading three more. Then the named G&L lines: Chipmaster on 10, 502 on 10, RAM on 9 including RAM 630, 350 with 350T and 350RT on 15 between them, PMC on 8 with PMC-5 the common string, PC and PC50 on 13, Hydrostatic on 8, 340 and 340T on 11, 360 with 360C and 360P on 13, Hypro on 6, CFF, HC, Orion and HR behind those. Add 12 gantry and portal mills, 12 automation and pallet systems and 12 grinding rows.

Controls and Rebuilds on an Older G&L

A used Giddings & Lewis may not have the control it shipped with. The company had a numerical control of its own early, the Numericord Controller of 1955 in the Wisconsin Historical Society's record, and many heavy mills built since have been through a control retrofit or a mechanical rebuild. Fives still offers both for Giddings & Lewis machines: it lists control retrofits, mechanical rebuilds and other upgrade services, and predictive maintenance, rebuild, modernization, retrofit and repair work.

For a buyer that history decides a lot. A mill that has had its ways and spindle rebuilt and a current control fitted is a different machine from the same casting still on its first electronics, so tell us who did the work and when.

What Moves the Offer on a Used G&L

Send the model, year, condition, spindle hours, control type, and any tooling or accessories that go with the machine. Photos speed things up but are not required. On a boring mill the scope turns on model, year, spindle size, table size, condition, control type and, ahead of most of those, whether the control has been retrofitted. We buy G&L machines on four control families, Fanuc, Siemens, NumeriPoint and Allen-Bradley, and which one is in front of the operator changes what the machine suits next. Jason Puuri scopes it himself against current market demand along with model, condition and age, and a transparent offer usually comes back within 24 to 48 hours. Get the data plate string exactly right. We carry 387 distinct model designations across these 584 listings, and the same designation reaches us spelled more than one way: 70-H5-T alongside 70H5T, 350-T alongside 350T, G60-FX alongside G60FX, 65-D4-T alongside 65D4.

Fives Service, Trade-In Programs, or Selling Outright

If you are keeping a Giddings & Lewis in production, the OEM route is Fives: maintenance plans, OEM-backed parts and technical service, retrofits and rebuilds, with technical support offered seven days a week. Fives has also added trade-in options to offset new machine investments, through a used-machinery partner, for shops buying a new Fives machine.

If the machine is leaving and nothing new is replacing it, a trade-in does not apply. That is where we come in: we buy the Giddings & Lewis outright as it stands, with or without a recent rebuild.

Selling a G&L Direct: Rigging, Freight and Payment

Accept the offer and MTE can arrange the rest. We can arrange rigging, crating and freight, we can arrange the pickup, and we buy in all 50 states. Heavy transport is what matters on this book: with 209 boring mill rows and 12 gantry and portal mills, footprint photos and how the machine sits on the floor tell us more than a spec sheet. Condition is not a gate. Running production, sitting idle or needs work all get looked at the same way. MTE is a direct buyer, not a broker or listing service, and an affiliate of Superior Machine and Tool, buying and selling used CNC equipment since 2012. Giddings & Lewis traces its Fond du Lac, Wisconsin roots to 1859, went to MAG Industrial Automation Group and is now a Fives brand. Fives Giddings & Lewis still builds G&L boring mills and vertical turning centers in Fond du Lac, and we buy every generation.