I Am Looking At Some Haas Machines And Found An Hl-3 That Is A 1996 Model Price The Shop Has On It Is $30,000,it Is A Plain Two Axis No Tailstock, Is There A Lot Of Difference Between This And A Sl-30 Lathe Or Is It Just An Updated Look And Name, And Is This A Decent Price For This Machine. All The Sl-30 Lathes I Looked At Were 2000 And Newer And Went From $55,000 To $85,000

050528-1525 EST USA

imwllc:

I like HAAS machines for their ease of use, we have 5 of them. One lathe and 4 mills. But if the 1996 HL-3 is what I think it is I would not buy it at $0.

2000 and newer lathes are good and you do not want to be without a tailstock. However, look at some of your applications and try them out on a HAAS distributor demo machine.

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What Are Some Of The Reasons That Haas Machines Pre-2000 Arent As Good?

Haas has done a lot of work on thier lathes in that time. I would pass on that machine at that price.
Gary

050529-0643 EST USA

imwllc:

We had an early HAAS lath that required a number of service calls. Among these was a spindle failure, meaning a terrible sharp noise on spindle reversal.
Obviously a bearing problem.

The early lathes had a spring loaded collet closer, pneumatically actuated. On our new machine we have a hydraulic closer. This generates more heat but is better otherwise. Also only one turret was available.

The servos were DC brush type, and on our 1993 VF-2 we had trouble with carbon buildup shorting out the controller. We did not keep the lathe long enough to encounter the brush dust problem.

The maximum RS232 baud rate on all HAAS machines was 38.4 kbaud until about 1998.

The worst problem on early HAAS lathes was software bugs in canned cycles.

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050601-1540 EST USA

Here is another difference we notice on HAAS machines between our 1993 and 2000 models.

When we have minor power perturbations the newer mills are less likely to dropout. This means they have more energy storage than the older units or a longer time constant on the dropout detector.

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