We are currently researching buying a dowel inserter, cnc controlled. I am curious to here any feed back on your thoughts, comments, likes & dislikes. 

If anyone has one they might be interested selling let me know.

We bought a Gannomat Index Trend 130 and I would recommend it. 

We are looking at that option as well.  There were some great machines in Vegas.  The one that caught my eye the most was the HPJ by Accu-Systems http://www.accu-systems.com/page10.html.  It can receive posts from Microvellum and will integrate nicely into a bar code reading system.  It was about 36k but it looked like it would do the best job out of the 4 or 5 that I looked at.  Probably out of his territory, but I have been working with a guy by the name of Jeremy here in Houston, he is a wealth of info.  Send me an email if you want his contact info I am sure that he would love to talk with you about them.  I talked with him today and there is a used machine on the market as well, not the above model but it might be something to consider.  Let us know what you decide and what you get if you do buy.

 You also ought to check out the Omal dowel inserter from Delmac Machinery Group.

I looked at the Omal & the HPJ both at the show and they are both comparable in price. I did not get a chance this year to look at the Gannomat, last year it was the highest and this year I could not get any one at their booth to help me. I am kind of leaning towards the HPJ for these reasons:

1. The HPJ machine looked simpler less parts, hopefully means less problems.

2. It was just a few dollars cheaper, but the omal was close enough that I could go either way.

3. I belive it was made in north america with non-proprietary parts which I could find parts locally if needed.

The concerns I have are I am a little worried about going to preglued dowels (cabinets falling apart).

Even though they say glue works fine in the HPJ I am a little concerned if it sits over the typical three day weekend will I have problems?

not sure about the Accu systems but the Gannomat and Omal have four zones for the 4' machine, the omal has a more friendly software but you wont need it much as MV will be generating code for it. gannomat has rack and pinion drive the omal has a ball screw. gannomat comes standard with 8 clamps not sure about the others and yes they are expensive when you want to add more clamps. one cool feature for the omal machine is the center stop drops down in the table without the need for any tools.For us it came down to gannomat or omal and we got the gannomat.

try to see at all the machine in action maybe run some of your parts too.

good luck

Ash

You might not know it, but different machine companines tend to "configure" or "outfit" these machines with their own features.  For example, an Omal from one company may have a completely different user interface than one supplied by another company, same brand and model.  Keep this in mind when shopping.  This can have an impact on day to day operation.

We are using the Accusystems HPJ here and it integrated seamlessly with Microvellum.

The barcode scanning capabilty is a fantastic time saver.

 We just sold our HPJ about 6hrs ago and bought a new Gannomat Trend 180. As far as likes and dislikes on the HPJ. It is a good solid machine we have had it for 3 years not alot of problems and the service was excellent when we had problems. Our biggest issue was the glue system. I don't think it is made to use glue. We also had alot of problems with it not firing dowels because of dust getting in the feed tube. Hope we do not have the same problem with the Gannomat. Our HPJ was a 2001 model the year before they switched to windows based pc's. Since 2001 I would say they have made some improvements on the machine.

kswood,

We may be aquiring a Weeke MAW ABD-100 dowel inserter through an aquisition.  If this happens it will be for sale.  At this time about all the info I can give you is that it is 1 1/2 yrs old and we were told that it was not ran at top production any during that year and a half.  If you are interested let me know and I will keep you up to date on the process of all of this.

It looks like we are going with the HPJ. For the most part we've had good feed back on this machine. But just out of curiosity what is the price?

I could be off just a little but I am pretty sure the price at the show in Vegas was 38k or was it 36k.  None the less somewhere around there.

Well our aquisition is not planning out as anticipated and we are now discussing partnering with another company, but this is one of those bankrupt deals and who knows what will happen.  We are making an offer today and going to give them 10 days to respond.  If they accept our offer it will be in the ballpark of $30,000.  It appears though that the HPJ runs a little less than the Weeke's and the Omal's.  I have an Omal and it has worked out wonderful for us.  Good Luck!

We have a custom HPJ with routing capabilites.  Awesome machine.  Support is good.  We are in the process of adding barcode capabilites to it.  Definitely recommend the machine.

 -Luke, California Woodworking, Inc.

And regarding the gluing of the dowels I recommend using preglued dowels.  No gooy mess!