I just bought a Onefinity Easy ATC, it has four bays, collet sensors, no dust cover. It was on sale for Black Friday down from $834.99 and I paid $575.00. It is new-years and the price has not gone back up. The item arrived a few days ago and turns out to be largely 3D printed and crude, with gritty movements - a bit disappointing on its own. Then I went to the RapidChange ATC website to activate my tool changer (a requirement to get the needed software) and discovered that a subjectively nicer looking model with the same four bays, collet sensors, no dust cover is sold there for $450 and is on sale for $360, nearly half the price of the Onefinity offering! What is more, the direct from RapidChange version appears to be of solid construction with smooth refined parts. For the same money, I could have gotten eight bays instead of four, and added an automatically opening dust cover. It seems I would have received a better build quality and more than double the product.
Has anyone noticed this? What does the Onefinity Easy ATC offer that warrants an 85% mark-up and cheaper materials? I currently find the purchase regrettable due to these differences in value.
I have no direct experience using the Easy ATC or traditional RapidChange ATC magazines, but have learned a lot from my own research including direct discussions with Onefinity and Don at RapidChange - given the speculative nature of many of your comments I encourage you to email the above companies to get the answers from the source.
A few things to consider that I have learned…
The main benefit of the Easy ATC, and the reason Onefinity worked with RapidChange to design it, was to enable it to be used with a dust shoe. This meant it needed to have separate raised towers, each with its own IR sensor/receiver for tool detection.
The main structure of both types of magazines is machined from a large block of plastic (HDPE I believe). The Easy ATC towers have additional large machined hollow cylinders of the same material held in place with steel locking pins. These are covered with a 3D printed shell that has no structural function other than to hold the IR sensors in place, but also keep the internal towers debris free while adding a clean design aesthetic, and help guide the brushes of the dust shoe if one is used.
Both ATC solutions use 3D printed parts for the rest of the internal parts. You would have to do quantitative testing to determine whether having any of these parts injection molded adds any benefit - either way having molds made would be a significant investment for either company.
For a fair comparison, you would also need to consider what ships with each ATC solution. In the case of the Easy ATC, there are many additional components…
Solid aluminum work surface mount and hardware
Solid aluminum spacer plate for certain models and hardware
Collet nuts
Wiring harnesses where applicable
Tool cup system/O rings (and extra parts) to reduce the risk of endmill drop/drift
*and as previously highlighted, the ability to use an available dust shoe of reasonable cost/simplicity specifically designed for the Easy ATC.
As for value, it will be up to each individual to decide if the above are worth the (current) extra $575-$360=$215.
Thank you for the detailed breakdown of your findings. That is all great information.
I did talk to RapidChange directly and they mentioned dust shoe compatibility as being the main factor for the price difference. For me, this feature makes no difference as I mainly do deep carves and have the shoe mounted above the collet with extra long brushes to avoid collision while carving, or use blowers and extraction instead of collection. I can see the draw for those who cut lower profile jobs.
Collet nuts being around $30 each, and the system coming with four of them (~$120 in value) helps bring the value closer to alignment (assuming the RapidChange direct models don’t come with them). I did have to buy the collets themselves, as it did not come with any.
I have found that the aluminum mounting plate and brackets used to attached the ATC to the QCW system were not included in my shipment and are (unbeknownst to me at the time) an extra $100 and listed as a separate product page. I manufactured my own mounting plate / bracket to avoid the multi-week shipping delay and discovered cost. I don’t think the aluminum work surface mount added any real value in my particular case, but it may for others.
The wiring harness is nice to have, but you can select Masso for the RapidChange direct model as well, and it’s wiring diagram is simpler.
In the end, I wish I had known about the full range of offerings and could have made a more informed decision, but I can feel a little better after factoring in the collet nuts at least.
Given your described use case I can understand why you felt (are feeling) that the Easy ATC does not provide the value for you that other offerings from RapidChange might.
Over many years on forums and reaching out to manufacturers my opinion is that Onefinity works very hard to continually provide innovative and functional products of high quality and excellent customer support, all within an ecosystem (often driven by customer requests) that allows for easy installation and upgrades for those valuing this.
I mention this because in cases like yours, or in my case where 5 years ago I purchased the Original Woodworker as a base knowing I would add my own motors, ATC/VFD, and Masso G3 controller, we may need to do a bit more research and digging ahead of time to make sure the solution we choose is the best for us.
I think a lot of these RapidChange systems have been sold to date, so it may be an option for you to sell what you have and purchase and try a different ‘non-Onefinity’ model. It may require a bit more time and effort on your part to source and install, but in the end may serve your needs better.
I purchased the rapidchange version with 8 tool pockets for the same price as the 4 pocket version from 1F. I’m a tightwad and felt I needed mote then 4 tools. I really think it all boils down to how much you would need 1F support for your machine, having built a few CNC machines in the past It was not that important to me but I can see the need for many users.
By the way my Rapidchange ATC has worked flawlessly having done thousands of tool changes, I love it.