Used Liebherr Machines We Buy

Who Builds Liebherr Gear Machines

The gear hobbers, grinders and shapers under this name are built by Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH, the gear technology company of the Liebherr Group, in Kempten, Germany, where it also runs its training center. Liebherr says the business began out of necessity: at the end of the 1950s gear wheels for gearboxes were hard to come by, so Hans Liebherr started building hobbing machines himself to make the gears his cranes needed.

North America has its own plant. Liebherr's gear companies in Saline, Michigan, were established in 1986, and Liebherr says it produces gear cutting machines and turnkey automation systems there for customers in the US, Canada and Mexico, alongside sales, service and spare parts for its gear line.

Why Cranes and Excavators Share the Liebherr Name

Liebherr is a family-owned group of 13 product segments, and gear machines are only one of them. The group started in 1949 with Hans Liebherr's mobile tower crane, the first product of his engineering works in Kirchdorf, and its first hydraulic excavator went into series production in 1954. Mobile cranes come from Liebherr-Werk Ehingen, founded in 1969, and in 1977 Liebherr presented the LTM 1025, the world's first all-terrain mobile crane.

That is why this hub holds both kinds of machine. The crane and excavator listings come from the construction side of the group, while LC, LCS, LGG and LS plates belong to the gear machines from Kempten or Saline. We read the model prefix first: the gear machines are what we buy, and the cranes and excavators are not.

Liebherr Gear Machine Lines

Liebherr's current gear cutting line covers hobbing, shaping, skiving and grinding. Its LC hobbing machines take workpieces from 20 millimeters up to gears 16 meters across, from the compact LC 180 - 280 to the LC 2000 - 12000. For hard-fine finishing it offers the LCS and LGG generating and profile grinders, plus the LGP 800 - 2000 profile grinder for large gears.

The LS shaping machines run from the LS 80 - 280 to the LS 1800 - 3500, with a choice of an electromechanical or a hydraulic shaping head. ChamferCut, Liebherr's chamfering process, comes built into some hobbers and can be added to others as an extra device.

Liebherr Model Numbers and Workpiece Size

On Liebherr's current hobbing, grinding and shaping pages, the numbers in a model name roughly track the workpiece diameter in millimeters. Liebherr's own figures:

A DC after an LC 300 or LC 500 means the ChamferCut chamfering unit is built in, and the LC 700 M is Liebherr's manual gear hobbing machine. Older L-series and earlier LC and LCS plates are not on these pages, so send the full plate reading.

LCS Grinder Generations

Liebherr dates the LCS in its own customer magazine: it introduced the machine in 1988 as the first to grind gears by generating with dressing-free CBN worms. The generations on Liebherr's account, which runs to the LGG of 2020:

Liebherr says more than 800 LCS machines are installed and that some have run for 20 to 25 years; early ones have also been overhauled with new control technology under its REMAN program.

Controls on a Liebherr Gear Machine

Current Liebherr gear machines pair Liebherr's own LHGearTec programming software with a Siemens control, and the newest support the SINUMERIK ONE platform. LHGearTec walks the operator through workpiece and tool data and runs on Liebherr's hobbing, grinding, shaping and skiving machines; Liebherr credits it with 25% faster setup. The LHStation panel pairs a large fixed monitor with the LHMobile handheld unit used during setup.

On an older machine, note which control and software generation is on it and whether it has been updated. Liebherr sells software upgrades and rebuilds, and some early LCS grinders have been overhauled with its latest control technology.

Build Year, Size Class and REMAN on a Used Liebherr

Three maker facts move the number on a used Liebherr gear machine. The first is the size class in the model name, which tells a buyer how large a gear the machine can take (see the table above). The second is the build year: Liebherr's REMAN program offers a general overhaul only for machines manufactured since 2000, so a newer LC or LCS has a factory overhaul path that an older one may not. The third, on a grinder, is the generation, because the second LCS generation brought a direct-drive machine table and the third added corundum grinding next to CBN.

Liebherr Service and REMAN, or Selling Outright

Liebherr-Verzahntechnik backs its machines with a global network of more than 100 service technicians, remote service, original spare parts and preventive maintenance packages, and Saline runs the REMAN program in North America, returning equipment to original quality through reconditioning, overhaul or repair. That support suits a Liebherr gear machine you plan to keep.

Liebherr's own Used Equipment Marketplace is built around construction machines, cranes and parts and carries only products from certified Liebherr sales and service partners, so it is not a place for a gear shop to sell a hobber. When a Liebherr has done its work for you, we buy it outright.

What Moves the Offer on a Used Liebherr Gear Machine

Gear diameter capacity is the first thing we ask about, because a machine sized for small transmission gears and one built to swing a large ring gear are different conversations even when both wear an LC badge. Control type and generation come next: what is on the screen, whether the drives are still supported, and whether anyone left in the shop still programs it. Then tooling and workholding, since hobs, cutters, arbors, chucks and fixtures that stay with the machine change what the next owner has to source on day one. Hours matter less than whether the machine still holds tolerance on a checked part, so tell us when it was last inspected. Age gets weighed against all of that rather than on its own. Jason Puuri scopes Liebherr work himself against what we are buying at the moment, so a person reads your data plate rather than a formula filling a template.

The LC and LCS Families We See Most

LC is the largest model family in this hub at 84 listings, and LCS is second at 23. Behind them sit LFS at 14, LSE at 10, LS at 7, LGG at 4 and LFG at 3. The individual plate readings that repeat most are L3002 at 7, LC 502 and LC 82 at 6 each, then L252, L-401 and L-652 at 4 apiece, with LFS 380, LCS 282, L-902 CNC and L 3002 CNC showing 3 each. Larger plates such as LC 1200 and LC 2000 turn up in pairs, and LGG-400M shows twice. LGG generating grinders are worth a separate note. We buy them, but in this hub LGG is 4 listings against LC at 84, so a grinder and a hobber do not sit in the same place in our book. If yours reads LGG, send it anyway. We quote what the data actually says, model by model.

Beyond the Gear Room: Lathes, Boring Mills and Grinders

A Liebherr that never touched a gear still gets an offer here. The hub carries 25 CNC lathes, 12 horizontal boring mills, 10 CNC grinding machines and 9 in the CNC miscellaneous machines bucket, plus 6 horizontal machining centers, 4 drilling and tapping centers, and 3 each of vertical machining centers, gantry and portal mills, and vertical turret lathes. One turning center rounds it out. The largest single label on the hub is Metal Cutting at 135, ahead of CNC Gear Machinery at 125, so gear work is a real slice of the book without being the whole of it. The long tail matters before you call. There are 270 distinct models across 361 listings, and families of two or more cover only 227 of them, which leaves 134 listings carrying a model token that appears exactly once. The number on the plate places a machine here, not the family name.

Liebherr Cranes, Excavators and Material Handlers

Liebherr is not only a gear machine builder, and this hub reflects that. Construction and material handling listings total 23 of 361, spread across construction equipment, construction machinery, cranes, excavators, crawler dozers and material handling labels. Plate readings from that part of the lineup repeat in the model data too: LTM1160 at 4, then LTM, A934CHD, R914, R934, R954B, R954BHDW, PR716, LR853, LH22, LH24, LH40 and 924 at 2 apiece, with LTM1160/2 showing 3 times as a full reading. MTE buys CNC machine tools and metalworking machinery, not cranes, excavators or other construction and material handling equipment, so we do not quote these. The practical point for a seller is that Liebherr alone does not tell us what the machine is, so the model number comes first: an LC, LCS, LGG or LS plate is a gear machine we buy, and an LTM crane or an R excavator plate is not.

What to Have Ready Before You Call

Start with the data plate: model exactly as it reads, serial number, and the year if the plate carries one. Add the control type, gear diameter capacity on a gear machine, a list of the tooling and workholding that goes with it, and the last service or calibration date. A couple of photos, one of the control screen and one of the work envelope, will speed things up, though they are not required. The plate carries the weight on Liebherr, not the product line. There are 270 distinct model designations across the 361 listings in this hub, so the family name on its own rarely places a machine. Age spread is the other reason. Machines from the late 1960s through 2022 come through here, and only part of the book carries a year at all, so what you read off the plate beats anything we could infer from the product line.

Selling Outright Instead of Listing or Auctioning

MTE is a direct buyer, not a broker and not a listing service. You are selling to us, so there is no listing, no broker, and no waiting on a third party buyer. We can arrange rigging, crating and freight in all 50 states. We can arrange the pickup. Condition is not a gate: running production, sitting idle since a job ended, or down and needing work all get evaluated. One machine or a full gear line comes through on the same terms. We have bought and sold used CNC equipment since 2012 as a division of Superior Machine and Tool. A Liebherr also does not have to leave on its own. If the floor is mixed, Mazak, Okuma, Doosan, Haas and Makino equipment goes on one quote and one truck, and we buy Gleason and EMAG gear machines as well.