Machine tool repair, at your plant
Cavco repairs machine tools where they stand, on your floor, across New England and wherever the machine is. We diagnose from the machining problem rather than from the broken part, because the part that failed is often not the reason it failed. Repair is most of what we do and the work that keeps a tool room running, and we have done it since 1980.
We start at the bad part, not the broken one
A machine tells you it is broken in the language of the part it makes. The finish goes off, a bore comes out oval, a long cut runs tapered, the table sticks at one end of its travel. The component that finally failed is often downstream of the reason, so replacing it buys a few months and the same call again.
We diagnose from the machining problem and work back, which is slower on the first visit and much faster over a year. Where that leads to something bigger than a repair, we say so, and where it leads to one worn axis, a geometric rebuild of that axis is usually the whole answer.
What we fix
Mechanical and electrical, with one crew on one visit. The electrical side is on our CNC page in more detail, because the questions differ.
- Scored, worn or loaded ways, slides that stick or rock, gibs that will not adjust out. Repaired in place where the geometry allows it.
- Runout, heat and noise. We say whether it is the cartridge or the geometry around it before anything comes out, which decides how big the job is.
- Backlash and lost position. Screws replaced, preloaded and aligned to the ways, gearboxes and feed trains put right.
- Leaks, pressure loss, starved ways, torn covers and wipers. The small jobs that stop a machine, and the ones that stop the big jobs happening.
- Rotary accuracy, clamping and drive faults, on fourth axes and on dedicated tables.
- After a move, after a crash, or because nobody has checked in ten years. Measured against the other axes with lasers and electronic levels, and the numbers left with you.
The machine stays on your floor
Shipping a machine out is rigging, trucking both ways, reinstallation and debugging, and the downtime is measured in weeks before anyone has touched the problem. Doing the work in place removes all of that. It is why almost everything here happens at your plant, and why we developed a proprietary process for grinding ways in place, which is the one job that normally forces a machine out of the building.
Toolroom and production lathes, knee and bed mills, horizontal and vertical boring mills, vertical turret lathes, surface, cylindrical and specialty grinders, broaching machines and their index tables, press brakes, and the CNC machining centres that stand beside them. Mechanical and CNC alike. If yours is not here, ask.
Questions we get
- Anything short of a full rebuild, mechanical and electrical. Worn ways and slides, spindles, ball screws, hydraulics and lube, way covers, index and rotary tables, turrets and tool changers, drives, motors and controls. Alignment and leveling after a move. The list is long because a machine can stop being useful in a lot of ways.
- Yes, and most of the work is exactly that. We are called to machines we have never seen, from builders we have and have not worked on, and the first job is always to find out what is actually wrong rather than to confirm what somebody already guessed.
- Most repairs happen at your plant, which is the point. Diagnosis, alignment, spindle and screw work, hydraulics and controls are all on-site work. Even way grinding, which normally means shipping a machine out, we do in place with a proprietary process. A complete rebuild comes to our shop, and we say so before you commit.
- We are the local shop for the Naugatuck Valley and Hartford, Danbury and Fairfield County, Groton and the shoreline, Springfield, Worcester, Pittsfield and the Berkshires, Boston's North Shore, Rhode Island, the Hudson Valley, and the rest of New England. Nationally, we go where the machine is, and have for over 45 years.
- That is the most common call we get, and yes. A machine that throws no alarm and still makes bad parts has lost geometry rather than function. We measure it against itself, find which axis moved, and put that right, which is usually far less work than the problem feels like.
- Yes, with one crew on one visit. That matters most when it is not obvious which side is at fault, because two vendors on a machine that will not hold size will each tell you it is the other one.
Reviewed September 2026 by Cavco Machine Tool Rebuilding, LLC.
Tell us what the machine is doing
Call, or send the make and model and what you are seeing in the part. We answer the same day.