Used Nakamura-Tome Machines We Buy

Who Builds Nakamura-Tome Machines

Nakamura-Tome machines are built by Nakamura-Tome Precision Industry Co., Ltd., whose head office is in Hakusan, in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. Tomeo Nakamura, who had worked in textile machinery, founded Nakamura-Tome Iron Works in Kanazawa in 1949 as a subcontract shop. In December 1960 he set up Nakamura-Tome Precision Industry so the job shop could become a manufacturer, and its first product, a hydraulic groove turning center, followed in 1962.

The company's main facilities are at its head office site, and a second factory, in Daegu, Korea, was completed in 2012. Nakamura-Tome reports 631 employees and makes CNC multitasking machine tools alongside glass and lens processing machines.

From Turret Lathes to Twin-Spindle Multitaskers

Nakamura-Tome's first hydraulic automatic turret lathe was born in 1963, the year the factory moved to its present site, and its NT-5 automatic turret lathe sold 5,000 units before it went out of production in 1986. The ATM-4M, its first NC turning center, was shown at JIMTOF in Osaka in October 1974, and in 1982 the TMC-5LAM CNC integrated center joined machining and turning for diversified small-lot production.

The step that shaped most used Nakamura-Tomes came in 1988 with the TW-20, a twin-spindle, twin-turret CNC turning center that made simultaneous one-hit machining possible. Nakamura-Tome calls it a global best-seller and the base for its later WT and Super NT series. In 2000 the STW-40 added a tool spindle and an ATC to twin spindles and twin turrets, combining a turning center and a machining center. Nakamura-Tome's history page, which runs to 2018, has its last machine-tool entry in 2008, when the SuperMill multitasking series won an MM award at AMB, a German exhibition.

How Nakamura-Tome Groups Its Current Machines

Nakamura-Tome sorts its current lathes and multitasking machines by turret and tool layout. The series letters tell you which class a machine belongs to:

From Nakamura-Tome's machine tool catalog page. Older series that turn up in listings, such as TMC and Super NT machines, are not on the current page.

What Decides the Offer on a Used Nakamura-Tome

The layout comes first. Nakamura-Tome's own catalog filters its machines by chuck size, by single spindle or opposed two spindles, by ATC or turret count, and by whether a swiveling B-axis is fitted, and those are the same traits that move a used price. A twin-spindle, two-turret WT is a different machine from a single-turret SC, so send the full model name from the plate, suffix letters included.

Software counts as well. Nakamura-Tome's NT Update service lets machine users update the software installed on its multitasking machines once they register with their user and machine information, and its software list includes NT Collision Guard and NT Manual Guide i. Tell us whether your machine was registered and which software it runs.

Nakamura-Tome Models We See Most

Most Nakamura-Tomes that reach us are twin-spindle, two-turret lathes: WT-100, WT-150, WT-250 and WT-300 machines, Super WT-150II MMY versions among them, along with TW models, the line the WT series grew from. We also see single-turret AS-200L lathes, SC machines such as the SC-250 and the Super Mill SC-200L, and older TMC-15H and TMC-20 turning centers. Our Nakamura-Tome model pages are linked below, sorted by machine type.

Methods, Nakamura-Tome America, or Selling Outright

In the United States, Nakamura-Tome names Methods Machine Tools, Inc. of Sudbury, Massachusetts, as its distributor and lists its own office as Nakamura-Tome America in Boston. Its US presence goes back to 1975, when it opened service stations in Chicago and Los Angeles. A machine you plan to keep running is a job for that network. For one you want gone, we buy it outright, and a lathe sold through Methods and tagged with that name is still a Nakamura-Tome to us.