TAIG TOOLS sells their products to individuals, companies and educational institutions. TAIG is successful in the academic arena, as their US made machines are a natural fit. “Educators love our products, for their price and reliability”, said Craig. “Students use our machines to make small parts just like they would use a big machine to make big parts. The company sells its mills and lathes to schools and universities largely via word of mouth and they have supported teams in building robots for clubs and competitions over the years.  

In the beginning TAIG targeted sales of their lathes and mills to the hobbyist who wanted to make small parts in their workshop for various projects. But over the years more and more machines have been sold to companies who use them in their business. A dental company in England, for example, bought 30 CNC mills and runs them 24 hours a day making special dental molds.
TAIG mills and lathes are truly mini, but Craig says, “If you want to train to work on a large mill or lathe, you can learn from our machines, and the transition to a standard size mill or lathe is nearly seamless.” The company’s CNC mill runs off a standard PC. “Our TAIG mill can be purchased as a manual mill”, Craig said, “and then it can be upgraded to a CNC mill easily”. (This is a very cost effective way to purchase the product.) Still, the majority of TAIG’s customers are CNC mill users, with a ratio of CNC to manual of 5:1.
Not only does TAIG TOOLS sell internationally but a number of their distributors initially were TAIG users! The company has over 30 dealers selling their products today.
For more information on TAIG TOOLS, call 480.895.6978 or go to their website at taigtools.com.

 Hear from TAIG’s Customers/Dealers!

“They are a very honest and down to earth group to deal with. If you are looking for slick marketing materials and fancy logos, you will not find it at TAIG. Their background is as a sub-contractor in the aerospace industry. So they know machining, not marketing. Their machines and company reflect this.
They are straightforward and honest, with the focus being making solid products that work as they are supposed to.
I feel their lathe and their mill really are separate markets. Yes, many people will get both. But we see a lot of activity with the lathe to people with no machining background that have a need to make things. The mill on the other hand is one of the more heavy-duty competitors in the tabletop mill category. We see quite a number of people that are already competent manual machinist getting a TAIG mill and setting it up as a CNC machine to learn on. We also have a number of customers that use their CNC TAIG mill for small scale production.”

Tim Goldstein A2Z Corp

“I bought my first lathe from TAIG TOOL nearly 15 years ago. The most important was the cost! It was possible to get started for around $250 back then if you supplied your own motor. The only alternatives were much more expensive.
The machine promised good accuracy and it certainly delivered. I initially purchased it to make gemstone-carving tools but found it had great utility generally.
These days I mostly use it to machine small parts for air gun (pellet gun) repair, including the machining of urethane rubber. I do use it for any small jobs that I come across.
The CNC mill I use mostly for our jewelry business, both making dies for hydraulic die forming and for machining and engraving sterling silver directly. It has allowed me to create unusual pieces that I wouldn’t be able to produce any other way.
I became a dealer for TAIG TOOLS around 1998.They’re great. Being a family run business they tend to treat their dealers well and we’ve never had a support problem that couldn’t be easily solved.
Forrest (the owner) is a great guy to talk to and every conversation is a learning experience.
TAIG mills and lathes work very well for anything that requires smaller parts. Most of my customers are equally divided between hobbyists and prototyper/researchers. I’ve sold to every type of hobby there is, yoyo makers, steam engine nuts, pen turners, paintballers, scale modelers. I’ve sold the machines to many university labs as well. If you look through the picture section of my website (www.cartertools.com) you’ll see the diverse projects as well as many of the modifications to the machines.”

 Nick Carter, Carter Tools