CNC Brand Profile

Citizen: The Watchmaker That Shipped 100,000 Lathes

A watch is a box of tiny turned parts, and somebody has to make them. Citizen decided early that the somebody would be Citizen. Here is how a Tokyo watchmaker became one of the best-known names in Swiss-type turning, and what to check on a used Citizen.

Citizen Machinery at a Glance

A Watchmaker That Needed Lathes

Citizen started as a watch company. According to its corporate history, the Shokosha Watch Research Institute was founded in Tokyo in 1918, finished its first pocket watch in 1924, and became Citizen Watch Co. in 1930.

Watches are full of small, precise turned parts: pins, screws, arbors and shafts. Citizen began producing machine tools of its own before World War II. Its own history is not consistent on the year, giving 1936 in one place and 1941 in another. Our Citizen Cincom L20 Meet the Machine covers that early story and the L20 itself. This profile covers the company that grew out of it.

Cincom: The Name Is the Spec

Here's the part most machinists never think about: Cincom is not just a brand. It is a description.

Marubeni Citizen-Cincom, the company that sells Citizen lathes in the United States, says Cincom stands for Citizen Numerically Controlled Machines. Citizen Machinery's history dates the first one to 1970, when Citizen Watch developed the Citizen Cincom D16, its first NC automatic lathe.

Cincom machines are sliding headstock lathes, the type most shops call Swiss-type. The bar is held in a collet in the headstock and fed through a guide bushing, so the cut always happens close to the support. That is how a Swiss lathe holds tight tolerances on long, thin parts, and it is the same kind of work a watch factory needs.

A File Maker Named Miyano

Citizen's second lathe brand has its own long history, starting as a maker of precision files in Tokyo in 1929 and building what Citizen calls Japan's first cam-operated automatic lathe, the Miyano AL-S25, in 1948. Our Miyano Brand Profile tells that story. Here is how the two companies came together.

Citizen and Miyano moved together in steps. Machinery magazine reported in 2009 that the two would converge their sales on January 1, 2010, with Citizen Holdings raising its stake in Miyano to about 65 percent. Citizen says Miyano became a wholly owned subsidiary in 2010 and merged into Citizen Machinery in 2011, under the name Citizen Machinery Miyano. The company took the name Citizen Machinery in 2015.

The brands stayed separate because they do different jobs. Cincom covers sliding headstock work, and Miyano covers fixed headstock lathes for larger bar.

Breaking the Chip

Anyone who has run a Swiss lathe has fought the bird's nest: long, stringy chips that wrap the part and the tools. Citizen's answer is LFV, short for low frequency vibration.

Machinery magazine described it in 2016: the machine moves the tool back and forth along the Z axis, the X axis or both while it cuts, so the chip thickness varies and the tool briefly cuts air. That breaks the chip. According to the magazine, the system took about three years to develop, the first L20-VIII machines with LFV shipped in autumn 2015, and LFV could be switched on and off within a cycle.

For a used buyer, LFV is an option, not a model. Two machines with the same model name can differ, so check the control for it.

Citizen in America

Citizen lathes in the United States are sold and serviced by Marubeni Citizen-Cincom, which describes itself as a joint venture of Marubeni Corporation and Citizen. Its website says it was founded in 1984 to market and service Cincom lathes, and Citizen Machinery dates the U.S. sales office to 1985. The company lists offices in New Jersey, California, Illinois and Massachusetts.

Our read: that support network is a big reason used Citizens sell well. Parts, service and trained technicians are available across the country.

On Our Floor

Our Citizen brand page shows two Swiss lathes:

2006 Citizen L20-VIII CNC Swiss Lathe.
2002 Citizen C-16-VII CNC Swiss Lathe with Sub-Spindle.

Confirm the control, options, tooling and availability with our team before you buy.

What to Check on a Used Citizen

Check the guide bushing. It supports the bar right at the cut, so wear there shows up as poor finish and lost tolerance. Ask whether the machine has run with or without a guide bushing, since some Citizen models can switch between the two.

Run both spindles. Check the main and sub-spindle for noise, heat and runout, and run a part transfer from main to sub.

Cycle every tool station. Run the gang tools, the back tools and any live tools, and watch for slow or noisy motion.

Confirm the control and options. Check the control generation, the software options and, on newer machines, whether LFV is installed and active.

Ask about the bar feeder. A Swiss lathe lives on bar stock. Confirm the bar feeder interface works, and whether a feeder comes with the machine.

Built on Small Parts

Citizen built its lathes to make watch parts, then sold more than 100,000 of them to everyone else. Miyano started with files and built Japan's first cam-operated automatic lathe. Together, they cover a wide range of the turned parts a production shop makes.

Resell CNC Take

A used Citizen is one of the safer Swiss-type buys because the support network never left. Buy the guide bushing, the spindles and the control generation, not the model name. And check for LFV: on the right parts, it is worth paying for.

Frequently Asked Questions