When A Customer Asks You To Look More Like Fanuc, You Know You've Arrived

Not every customer message is just a feature request. I've been in CNC automation long enough to know that the most meaningful feedback rarely arrives through a formal survey or a product review. It arrives in a chat window, at an odd hour, from someone who has clearly been thinking about your product carefully — and trusts you enough to say so.

That's what happened when the team at CNC Electronics Store reached out to us earlier this year. What they said stopped me and passed it straight to our R&D lead, Mr. Lin. It deserved that level of attention.

The Message That Started It All

The conversation opened simply: "I have one suggestion for you."

The team at CNC Electronics Store — a CNC equipment distributor and reseller based in Mexico, preparing for EXPOMAQ 2026 in León — sent us a photograph of a Fanuc oi-MF series vertical-panel controller. They wanted to know if SZGH could build a similar vertical-format panel for CNC lathe and milling machines.

What made the message stand out wasn't the request itself. It was the reasoning behind it. They pointed directly to our SZGH-650 series and said it already mirrors the Fanuc oi-MF/TF horizontal panel layout — and on that basis, they wanted the same design philosophy applied to the vertical format. Their end-users were asking for it. Their customers, operating machines in Mexican workshops and factory floors, were demanding it.

"As you made 650 series... Customer demanding this vertical model as well."

That sentence carries a lot of weight. It tells you that the SZGH-650 has already become a reference point, not just an alternative.

What the Request Really Means

When a distributor compares your product to Fanuc, they are not criticizing you. They are telling you that you have earned the right to be compared.

Fanuc is the global benchmark for CNC control panels. Operators around the world are trained on Fanuc interfaces. Machine shops specify Fanuc compatibility in their procurement criteria. The moment a customer uses Fanuc as their reference frame for what they want from you — not as a complaint, but as a vote of confidence — you have crossed a threshold.

The team at CNC Electronics Store knew SZGH had a vertical panel type already. They weren't asking us to build something from scratch. They were asking us to close a specific gap: to make the vertical format as ergonomically familiar to Fanuc-trained operators as the 650 series already is in the horizontal format. That is a precise, technically informed request. It comes from someone who has deployed our products, watched operators use them, and understood exactly what would make adoption easier.

The fact that their end-users are the ones driving this demand matters, too. This isn't one buyer's personal preference. It reflects a real pattern in the market — and a distributor who is close enough to their own customers to bring that signal back to us.

The SZGH Difference — Same Familiarity, Fraction of the Cost

SZGH designs and develops its own CNC controllers independently. We do not license Fanuc technology. What our R&D team has done, over years of product development, is converge on the same operational logic that Fanuc established — because that logic is simply the industry standard for how CNC machines are controlled. When operators find SZGH familiar, it is because good design tends toward the same conclusions.

The economic case for this is significant. SZGH controllers are priced at roughly one-third to one-quarter of equivalent Fanuc models. For a machine shop buying ten, twenty, or fifty machines, that difference is substantial. And if operators can transition from Fanuc to SZGH with minimal retraining — because the interface feels coherent and familiar — the total cost of switching drops further.

As I confirmed to the team at CNC Electronics Store: our current vertical-type controller already supports full closed-loop functions. The technical foundation is there. What they are asking us to refine is the ergonomic presentation — the panel layout that operators interact with every day. That is a reasonable ask, and it is one that our R&D team is now actively reviewing.

EXPOMAQ 2026 and What It Signals for the Market

EXPOMAQ, held in León, Guanajuato, is one of Latin America's most important machine tool exhibitions. Distributors who attend are not browsing — they are making real procurement and product decisions, and they are responding to real demand from the buyers and workshops they serve.

The fact that a distributor preparing for EXPOMAQ is thinking carefully about Fanuc-compatible ergonomics tells me something clear about where the Latin American CNC market stands. Buyers there want global-standard CNC performance. They want controllers their operators already know how to use. And they want all of this without the price that a global brand commands. SZGH is positioned exactly at that intersection — and conversations like this one confirm it.

Closing

Feedback like this is what actually drives SZGH's product direction. Not internal roadmaps alone, but real conversations with the people who sell and use our controllers every day. Mr. Lin reviewed the request the following morning. The vertical panel discussion is already underway.

That conversation started because a customer trusted us enough to say: "Make it better." We intend to.

Contact SZGH

If you are a CNC equipment distributor or machine shop evaluating SZGH controllers, we'd be glad to hear from you.