Used Chevalier Machines We Buy

Who Makes Chevalier Machines

Chevalier machines are built by Falcon Machine Tools, a Taiwan-based machine tool maker listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, and Chevalier Machinery Inc. is Falcon's US branch. Falcon was established in 1978 as a maker of precision surface grinders, and in 1981 it became the first grinding machine manufacturer in Taiwan to be designated a Grade A Manufacturer. Its US branch office opened in the Los Angeles area in 1982 to give US customers marketing and service, and Chevalier's showroom, main parts warehouse, distribution and training center is in Santa Fe Springs, California.

Falcon's company history records a Chuang-Hsing factory completed in 1998, with a second factory in the Chuang-Hsing Industrial Park, a factory in Shanghai, China, finished in two phases in 2002 and 2003, and a Suzhou factory opened in 2013. Chevalier says its machines are assembled in ISO-certified facilities with their own R&D, machining, sheet metal and electronics departments.

Chevalier's Grinding, Turning and Milling Lines

Falcon began with surface grinders, and grinders still lead the Chevalier catalog: CNC SMART grinders, fully automatic, semi-automatic and manual surface grinders, vertical grinders and double column grinders. The turning side covers multi-axis turning and milling lathes, vertical turning lathes and heavy-duty horizontal lathes such as the FBL slant-bed family, which Chevalier builds on a 45-degree slant bed and fits with a Fanuc 0i-T control on the FBL-510; an MC model adds live tooling and an L model a longer bed. Milling covers 5-axis machining centers, which Chevalier introduced in 2015, high-speed and heavy-duty production VMCs, double column bridge mills and horizontal boring mills. The QP series machining center dates from 2004.

Reading a Chevalier FSG Surface Grinder Name

Chevalier names its surface grinders FSG, then a code for how automated the machine is, with digits for the grinding size. On Chevalier's spec sheets the digits match the grinding area, width then length in inches: the FSG-618M grinds 6.0 by 18.0 inches and the FSG-1224ADIV 12.0 by 24.0 inches. The codes on Chevalier's product pages, as of this writing:

Older plates carry codes the current pages do not list, such as AD and ADII on automatic grinders, and the TX grinders, of which Chevalier's history names the FSG-1224TXII, winner of a Taiwan Fine Products award in 1995.

What Decides the Offer on a Used Chevalier

On a Chevalier surface grinder the first question is where it sits on the automation ladder in the table above: a manual M-series machine, a semi-automatic 2A, a three-axis automatic 3A or AD-series machine, or a CNC or SMART grinder with its own control and servo-driven axes. Next comes size, read from the digits in the model, and then the spindle, ways and table, since a grinder is bought for the finish and flatness it still holds. On an FBL lathe, live tooling (the MC models) and a long bed (the L models) set the configuration, and the Fanuc control generation counts as it does on any Fanuc-controlled machine.

Chevalier keeps a central parts warehouse in Santa Fe Springs that it says stocks parts for all machines it has sold in the United States, and its application engineers and dealer service people support those machines nationwide. That keeps an older Chevalier serviceable, and it is one reason an older grinder in good order still draws a quote.

The Chevalier Models We See Most

Surface grinders dominate the first page of this hub: manual FSG-618, FSG-618M and FSG-818M machines; automatic FSG-1224AD, FSG-1236AD, FSG-1632AD, FSG-1640AD and FSG-1640ADII grinders; and FSG-3A1020 and FSG-3A1224H three-axis automatics. The lathes include FCL-246 and FCL2680 machines and an FBL-520D slant bed, and an FLV-1600 vertical turning center, an FM-3VK milling machine, a 3072VMC machining center and a CG-1260 round out the page. Plates with codes Chevalier's current pages no longer list, such as AD and ADII, are quoted on their size, automation and condition like any other.