Haas and Fadal

[fourperf]

Does anyone here own a haas and a fadal mill? I have a Fadal TRM and want to buy another mill and dont know if I want to invest in another fadal or not. I know the Fadal control quite well so on one hand I would like to stick with fadal but it seems haas is way more of a stable company now and I am not sure about Fadal. Anyway my question is how easy is the transition into the haas control? Does it require a lot of training or can you dive right in and figure it out. I use solidworks/camworks so I would have a pp written for the haas. I am going to keep my trm. what to do about tooling? I suppose in the beginning I can just buy haas pull studs and share the cat 40 toolholders.

thanks

mark

[HemiRoadRunner]

Mark,
Both controls are great. I think the biggest difference in the Haas control is that you have most everything right in front of you on the keypad, whereas the Fadal uses menus and other shortcuts. The Haas control has several hot keys to make finding things easier. The Haas control looks more complicated at first, but it is very intuitive and I love it.

[Haas_Apps]

Originally Posted by fourperf Does anyone here own a haas and a fadal mill? I have a Fadal TRM and want to buy another mill and dont know if I want to invest in another fadal or not. I know the Fadal control quite well so on one hand I would like to stick with fadal but it seems haas is way more of a stable company now and I am not sure about Fadal. Anyway my question is how easy is the transition into the haas control? Does it require a lot of training or can you dive right in and figure it out. I use solidworks/camworks so I would have a pp written for the haas. I am going to keep my trm. what to do about tooling? I suppose in the beginning I can just buy haas pull studs and share the cat 40 toolholders. thanks mark

Mark,
I used fadals for many years. I had always thought the Fadal control was very easy, and it is. I had changed jobs to a company that had a Haas and it looked like a lot of buttons. After about ten minutes with the Haas control I found that the Haas was easier. About four years ago I started working for Haas.

[fourperf]

Thanks very much, After a few very nice phone calls and demo with Mike Steinbock I placed an order for a vf 2. It looks like a great machine. There do look like there are a lot of buttons (way more than my fadal) but it looks like it really makes sense. I think I will get the hang of it quite quickly.

Thanks a lot

mark

Originally Posted by Haas_Apps Mark, I used fadals for many years. I had always thought the Fadal control was very easy, and it is. I had changed jobs to a company that had a Haas and it looked like a lot of buttons. After about ten minutes with the Haas control I found that the Haas was easier. About four years ago I started working for Haas.

[MASTERCAMMASTER]

I used a Mac SE to program this one, old version Gibbs.
The machine used commands, not 1,2,3 questions.

[fourperf]

WOW, how long ago was that?

[MASTERCAMMASTER]

Originally Posted by fourperf WOW, how long ago was that?

1979 Fadal
45 taper tool holders which nobody makes anymore.
I worked on it in 97 and thought it was a pos. geared head with no horse power. Automatic took changer was useless (dropped tools)
Rapids were very slow.
This one was their first model.
25 of these were made.
They sold for 100k each.
http://www.fadal.com/company/history.html
I didn't even know that and I worked on it.
I thought it was an 82 not 79