Tormach Inc. Discusses Users' Right to Repair

Tormach Inc. recently released a video about the “right to repair,” which the company says has generated a lot of conversation in the industry.

In the video, Tormach’s CEO, Daniel Rogge, talks about the company’s philosophy of enabling customers to service their own Tormach machinery and equipment. Rogge says, “We thought it was important to communicate that it is, and has always been, Tormach’s policy to not only allow owners to service their own equipment, but that we encourage and support this, at no cost to the user [beyond replacement parts].”

Rogge talks about a trend he sees as growing in numerous industries, including automotive, electronics and others, to sell products that cannot be easily serviced by owners. Rogge sees this trend as becoming prevalent in the machine tool industry as well, and in some cases, manufacturers require a factory-supplied service technician to perform service and charge for software updates. “At Tormach, we design our equipment to be user installed, user serviced, user maintained and user upgradable,” he says in the video. “I think in this day and age, it’s almost criminal that some manufacturers charge thousands of dollars for software updates to their controls.”

As an example of Tormach’s customer repair policy, if a Tormach CNC machine requires a spindle replacement, users can buy the spindle directly from the website and replace it themselves with technical support and documentation available from Tormach at no cost. Other machine tool companies not only charge for the part, but also require it to be installed by a factory-authorized service person. Tormach says this service fee typically costs thousands of dollars and, in some cases, takes multiple weeks of downtime to schedule the service call. According to the company, the ability to repair one’s own machine enables users not only save on cost, but to gain flexibility and autonomy in the process.