Many of you have noticed that the Nomad has been out of stock for a while now and have called or emailed to see what’s going on. So, here’s the deal with the Nomad.

Late in 2019 we bought a 5-axis machining center, a Haas UMC-750 for those who are interested, to bring more Nomad production in-house instead of going to a local machine shop for 5-axis parts. That triggered a cascade of changes stemming from the thought, “Well, if we have to program these parts from scratch, we might as well fix a few things.” The problem is, once you change one part, you might as well change the rest of them, which is what we did.

The result is that we have a “New-ish Nomad” being made. It’s not a ground-breaking, all-new machine, but it is better all around.

Here’s a list of a few changes to expect:

• New spindle motor. More power, more RPM
• HG15 rails for the Z axis
• Inductive limit switches
• New lead nuts
• No more powder coating (too much money, too inconsistent, too much of a production bottleneck)
• Round belts for the spindle motor to reduce vibration

We think it’s a good all around change, with lots of little fixes and upgrades plus more of the Nomad is made in our own shop than before. Unfortunately, that’s where the problem is.

Our shop happens to be in Los Angeles, which is largely shut down right now, so all production work has has stopped for the time being. Once we’re able to bring our full staff back to work, we’ll ramp back up and try to get the new Nomad out the door as quickly as possible.

The bottom line is that it might be another month or two but the Nomad will be back and better than ever.