Used Henri Line Gantry Mills We Buy

Who Built Henri Line Machines

The machines MTE files under Henri Line carry the Liné name, which goes back to 1835, when Lefebvre set up a machine shop named Liné in Albert, in northern France. Today the business is Fives Liné Machines, a Quebec company that says it has been established in Granby, Quebec, since 1977 and has 150 employees. Granby is about 70 km from Montreal.

The Henri Liné name came later. The Granby plant, opened in 1977 as Liné Canada, closed in 1982 and re-opened in 1984 as Machines-Outils Henri Liné. In 1986 the plant in Albert, France, was renamed Henri Liné Machines-Outils. A Henri Line gantry mill may therefore have come from Quebec or from France, so send the plate and serial number when you contact us.

Henri Liné to Fives Liné Machines, Year by Year

Every dated entry in the history on the Fives Liné Machines page, from the first Liné shop on:

From the history on Fives Liné Machines' own page.

Gicamill, Vertamill, Macbormill and Powermill on Fives' Pages

Fives still lists the Liné Machines families that fill our Henri Line book on its gantry and high-rail mill pages. The Gicamill is a compact bedtable gantry mill with up to 5 axes, sized for parts up to 2 m high and 2.5 m wide; its one-piece bed and worktable sections keep the spindle and the table in line. The Gicamill R is a four-axis, low-rail version built for railway frogs and switches, with an ISO/CAT 60 taper.

The Vertamill is a bridge mill with a moving worktable, offered in several table sizes. The Macbormill is a low-rail gantry mill whose worktable, or floorplate, stands apart from the two beds that carry the moving gantry; Fives sizes it for parts up to 3 m high and 10 m wide and loads up to 10 t/m2, with 3 to 5-axis contouring. The Powermill V is the high-rail machine of the group, offered from 3-axis to full 5-axis motion and able to take Fives' mechanical heads, which Fives designs and builds in-house.

Reading a Henri Line Before We Quote It

We start with the structure, because the families are built differently: a bedtable gantry (Gicamill), a bridge mill over a moving table (Vertamill), a low-rail gantry over a separate floorplate (Macbormill) or a high-rail overhead gantry (Powermill V). On a Macbormill or a Powermill the floorplate and the rail length decide how large a part the next owner can take, and they shape the rigging plan as well.

Then the head. Fives offers its Liné Machines milling heads in high power, high torque and hybrid versions, and the axis count matters too: a Gicamill runs up to 5 axes, a Gicamill R four. Tell us which head is fitted, whether spare heads go with the machine, and the suffix after the family name on the plate, such as LS/5 or HS/5, so we match it to the right build.

Fives Service and Rebuilds, or Selling Outright

Fives names Liné Machines among the brands it supplies and supports, and offers predictive maintenance, rebuild, modernization, retrofit and repair services, with technical support seven days a week and teams in 15 countries. That is the route for a Henri Line you plan to keep cutting. If the machine is surplus, MTE buys it outright as a direct buyer, and records of a Fives rebuild or retrofit are worth sending with the details.

What Is in the Henri Line Book Right Now

This hub holds 15 listings and Henri Line is the only brand in it. The category split is short and complete: 13 filed as CNC gantry and portal mills, 2 as CNC vertical machining centers, no third category. Worth pausing on: all 15 are distinct models. Nothing repeats in this book, so there is no comparable second unit to lean on when we scope one. Every machine gets read on its own data plate, its own control and its own condition rather than against a stack of identical units. That makes the questions we ask about a Henri Line more specific than the ones we ask about a brand where the same model crosses our desk a dozen times a year. Only one of these 15 carries a build year on file, so matching yours to something here by age will not work. The designation stamped on the plate is what places it.

GICAMILL, the Family We See Most

GICAMILL is the largest model family in this hub at 8 of the 15, and the only one appearing in both categories. Six of those 8 are filed as CNC gantry and portal mills and 2 as CNC vertical machining centers, which means both of this hub's vertical machining centers are GICAMILLs. The designations on file are worth naming rather than describing in the abstract: GICAMILL 29 LS/3, GICAMILL 29 LS/3 ID, GICAMILL 25 LS/5, GICAMILL 15 LS/5 5-AXIS and GICAMILL 29 HS5. Three of the eight carry no size suffix at all, recorded simply as GICAMILL or GICAMILL 2. One further listing is spelled GICA MILL with a space and rolls up on its own, not into that count of 8. We point that spelling variance out on purpose: it is exactly why we ask for a photo of the data plate instead of a model name typed into a spreadsheet.

VERTAMILL, MACBORMILL and the Rest of the Book

That leaves 7 listings outside the GICAMILL family, worth naming one by one in a book this small. VERTAMILL is 3 of the 15, all three filed as CNC gantry and portal mills: VERTAMILL 215, VERTAMILL 215 LS/5 and VERTAMILL 215 5-AXIS. MACBORMILL is 2 of the 15, recorded as MACBORMILL 235 HS and MACBORMILL 235HS/6Q. There is one POWERMILL V240 HS/5 and one GICA MILL. Run that against the category split and it closes cleanly. GICAMILL and VERTAMILL account for 9 of the 13 gantry and portal listings and both of the 2 vertical machining centers, which puts the two MACBORMILLs, the POWERMILL and the GICA MILL in gantry and portal mills. Outside those two GICAMILL vertical machining centers, everything here is a gantry or portal machine. Two records call themselves planer type mills in the vendor's own title text, and both sit under gantry and portal mills, not a separate planer heading.

What Moves the Number on a Henri Line Gantry Mill

A gantry or portal machine is not scoped the way a vertical machining center is. On a bridge-type machine we weigh way and rail condition down the full length of travel, gantry and column squareness, ram and head condition, the control make and generation, and whether it still holds tolerance across the whole envelope rather than one corner of it. A machine tight at one end of the rails and drifting at the other is a different conversation, better heard from you than found at inspection. Head configuration counts too: two of the 15 records here carry a 5-AXIS designation, GICAMILL 15 LS/5 5-AXIS and VERTAMILL 215 5-AXIS, and a head like that gets scoped on its own, not folded into a family average. Send brand, model, year, condition and control type. Jason Puuri weighs it himself rather than running a formula, and a quote typically comes back within 24 to 48 hours.

Discontinued Models and Thin Data Plates

Ten of the 15 model records here carry a discontinued model marker in our catalog. That marks the specific older model version, not the family, since Fives still builds several of these families, and it says nothing else, not the listing, not the condition, not availability. Out of production has never ruled out an offer. What matters on a machine whose model line has ended is whether it holds tolerance and whether parts and service for its control remain reachable, since that drives how fast a shop could put it back to work. The catalog data argues for a plate photo better than we could. Two records are bare GICAMILLs, one a GICAMILL 2, one spelled with a space, and only one of the 15 carries a build year. Have ready: plate model and serial, build year, control make and generation, head configuration, whether it is still under power, and one wide shot of the floor. On a vertical machining center, add spindle hours, table size and axis travel.

Selling a Gantry Mill Direct Instead of Listing It

Machine Tool Exchange is a direct buyer, not a broker, an auction platform or a consignment service. You sell to us instead of waiting on us to find a third party. Once an offer is accepted we can arrange rigging, crating and freight in all 50 states, and we can arrange the pickup. Condition is not a gate. Running production, idle since a job ended, or already decommissioned against a wall, all three get evaluated, and one machine or a full floor comes on the same terms. On something the size of a gantry mill the rigging plan is built around the real footprint and how the machine sits, not a spec sheet, which is why the wide floor photo matters. If the floor is mixed, other brands go on the same quote and schedule. Cincinnati, SNK, Zimmermann, Zayer, Correa and Fooke are all brands we buy.