Need Help!- Trouble Facing Aluminium

[dertsap]

take a couple machine bolts that will just slide under the part and add nuts to them and use them as jack stands for the center edges , put a dial on the center of the part so you can be sure your not bowing the part as you jack , this will probably give you the rigidity that you need , sometimes a wad of packing foam will do the trick

[HuFlungDung]

RE: tramming the spindle to the table: mount a sensitive dial indicator in a holder in the spindle. You want this indicator to sweep through a circle almost as large as the table is wide. You sweep slowly and try to observe any trend for the needle to move up and down in a regular pattern (repeatable each sweep revolution).

If you notice a 'low corner' you can try adjusting the levelling screw closest to the low spot. If you make it worse, adjust the screw the opposite rotation If you think this works, be sure to go around and test all the levelling screws to make sure they all bear some of the machine's weight.

If you still get ridges on parallel passes, I would suggest that you get a Haas technician to come in and see what can be done. I shimmed my VF3 spindle cartridge a little bit because I could not bring the table into tram now matter how I adjusted the levelling screws. I did this by loosening off the big bolts that hold the cartridge into the head housing. You only need to loosen them a little bit, enough so that you can slide some shimstock between the flange and the head casting. It does not take a lot of thickness of shim, remember that the effect on the flange at an 8" diameter is going to be exaggerated if your sweep arm is longer and sweeping a larger diameter circle.

I like to ensure that I shim and get 3 point support of the spindle flange. That means at minimum, 2 shims about 120° apart while 120° from there, the flange bears directly on the head casting. If you only use a single shim, then the spindle cartridge cannot be stable and you may bend the flange over top the single shim when you tighten the bolts and this may transfer into an out of round condition of the spindle housing and cause bearing heat problems.

[JDenyer232]

Originally Posted by DareBee Seco makes an Octomill face cutter and has superb positive geometry with no possibility of dragging (for chatter). Low horsepower or weak setups typically don't phase it. Highly recomended.

We use the Octomill for roughing passes and it leaves a decent finish even when used on it's own, we usually follow up with a single point flycutter for thin parts that require a mirror like finish.