We have a new (3 yr. old) TL-3W that slows down when we are doing an interrupted cut on a 16" O.D. piece. Also, when cutting a 1/8" wide face groove the chuck stalled! We had a factory rep come in and give a quick tutorial to the guys, but this never showed up. Are we missing something?

What kind of material, what kind of cutter, what kind of cut (depth, width), RPM?

The RPM's were around 40. They were cutting steel with carbide in both cases. The interrupted cut was being done by program, but the face groove was being fed by hand (there was no pre-made program available, and we were only doing one part). The toolmaker told me he was feeding slowly with a 1/8" wide cutter for the groove when the chuck stalled. Normally running a tool into a part on a lathe with enough force to stall it would result in damage to the cutter and/or moving the part. Neither happened, which leads me to believe it didn't take too much force to stall it. When the iterrupted cut would slow the motor down (the cutter was a triangular insert) the current meter never went beyond half way. I believe the depth of cut was around .015". Also, the lathe is 208/230 volt in case it matters.

Did you have it in low gear?

That thing is supposed to have 1600lb-ft of torque at 60 rpm so you should have been able to tear the end off your face grooving tool without stalling the machine.

A hint for your toolmaker:

Don't try to feed by hand it is much too jerky and you cannot keep a nice steady feed. Practise using the jogwheel and buttons; one way to get smooth feed by hand is put the jog rate on 0.0001 which means you have to crank the jog wheel fairly fast but also means you can't go too fast and overshoot your end point.

Thanks for the input on the feeding. I will let the toolmaker know.

There is no gear changing on the lathe. Or if there is we can't see it.

There is no gear changing on the lathe. Or if there is we can't see it.

Here is an excerpt from the Haas website, I put in the bold and underline:


CNC/Manual Toolroom Lathe; 30" x 60" (762 x 1524 mm) max capacity, 30" (762 mm) swing, 30 hp (22.4 kW), 1800 rpm, A2-6 spindle, 2-speed gearbox, Intuitive Programming System, 1 MB program memory, 15" color LCD monitor and USB port. No workholding, toolpost or toolholders included. Operates on three-phase power only.

This is the link to the page:

http://www.haascnc.com/details.asp?ID=TL-3W&webid=LATHE_TL#CNCLatheTreeModel

I have seen the same spec (in two different locations), but I cannot find anywhere to change the gearing. I have looked through the hard copy operator's manual, the CD that came with it, and I have looked at the lathe. Both the toolmaker and I cannot find anywhere to change the gearing.

I know once I am told where to look I'll feel like an idiot, but it will be wirth it to have the lathe run the way it was expected to.

On a machine with a gearbox M41 selects low gear and M42 high gear; reading the lathe manual it seems like you have to specify, it does not do it automatically.

I can't thank you enough! We have not been able to run this lathe properly since we got it. I showed the info to the toolmaker and he was able to get it to change settings. I feel that it should be apparent to the operator (our other machines have indicators, levers, or buttons), and we have to remember to check it since the range stays wherever it is left at. Bottom line...we should be more productive now. Thanks again.

How tough are you on your operator?

Go out there and rip the handwheels for manual operation off, even take the apron off so there is nothing running in the rack; then tell him he has to learn how to run it as a CNC lathe, none of this farting around betwixt and between. :D

I doubt very much whether he is older than me or more set in his ways than I was but I switched to CNC totally after a lifetime running manual machines. Sure it exercises the old brain cells a bit and you have to adapt to the machine but once that is done a good old fashioned highly skilled machinist can really make these machines perform.

I can't thank you enough! We have not been able to run this lathe properly since we got it. I showed the info to the toolmaker and he was able to get it to change settings. I feel that it should be apparent to the operator (our other machines have indicators, levers, or buttons), and we have to remember to check it since the range stays wherever it is left at. Bottom line...we should be more productive now. Thanks again.

There is an indicator...right on the screen it will say High Gear or Low Gear.

There is an indicator...right on the screen it will say High Gear or Low Gear.

I had the operator pull up the screen. We cannot see it anywhere. Is it possible to send me a JPEG of the screen? I also wondered if it was possible that there is a software update that we didn't get.