Haas Lathe Reccomendations

[imwllc]

I Think I Want To Buy A Haas Lathe, I Am Looking At A Sl-30. I Do Almost All My Parts Out Of 316 Stainless, And There Is Very Heavy Boring And Turning, And Indexable Drilling With Drills From .906" Up To 1 5/8" Diameter. I Currently Have A Wasino Lj-63m, A Mitsubishi Tc-10b, And A Hitachi Hicell Ht23ii That These Are Ran On And I Know It Is Hard On These Machines. I Was Told That A Haas Lathe Will Not Hold Up Very Long With These Conditions. I Have Treid These Parts On A Hitachi Ht-20 And A Mitsubishi Tc-8b And A Takisawa Td-25 And Have Stalled These Machines And Cant Run Them There. Anyway I Am Looking For Feedback On How A Sl-30 Would Handle This Operation For 16 Hours A Day. And What Is Going To Be The First Parts To Fail In The Long Term If I Purchase A Haas.

[miljnor]

I have had an hl-1, and hl-2 (sl-20) since 1998 and Until a year ago I did only 316L stainless some inconel, and very little hastaloy. I have yet to "wear out " my machine. the hl-2 has even been thru some crashes but still runs like a champ. I use a 1.875" ceramet coolant fed drill on at least 1/2 of the jobs. so it can push it.. I also did ALOT of stainless hex (and if this isn't hell on a machine I don't know what is) Oh and I have an sl30 Its .... better!

I do primarily aluminum now and personaly I think do to the " chip float" factor aluminum maybe harder on a machine than any other material. Man that stuff gets everywhere, it even seams to wind up in sealed containers. when I ran stainless the shop was very clean and not many chips anywhere. Now with alum. we are in the crunchy bug like snow shop.

but seriously. the machines can handle it fine.

I bought one of my machines from a guy that couldn't get it to "hold tolerance" I haven't had any problems but then again I know what I am doing (still learning though). Got a REALY GOOD price on it though! hehehh I love the guys that always think cheap is junk.

ps: He bought a yasada so I sure he is happy with his new machine, because he bought one of the best. But I bet his pocketbook is realy hating it!

If you stalled the machines maybe your just pushing it too hard but without specifics no one can give you an accurate reply.

Feed, speed, cooant, material, depth of cut that kind thing

[WOLOG]

I have a SL-30 Big Bore that is a 2001 model. No major complaints about the machine. The control is wonderful. The new ones are even better with the new programming system. It is very accurate and has a lot of power. Inserted drills are no problem. Speaking of accuracy, I machined some parts this morning out of 316L SS and the tolerance on the bore stayed within .0006" for 23 parts. That doesn't sound like a lot of parts, but when i changed the insert I had 2 hours and 19 minutes cutting time on one edge of an insert.

We have another Haas SL-30 quoted right now. We are considering buying two more machines. As much as i like the Haas, I also am looking at a Mori Seiki.

I will be happy to answer any questions.

[NEOMAN]

I came across this site tonite and had to add my experience with the good old guys from Haas. This is all true and I won't give all the details because I am not going to spend an hour writing this up...but here it goes.
I purchased a new SL20 with a servo 300 barfeeder back in 2001. The machine was delivered and set up and I was so excited to start using the new lathe. Day 2 of my new toy and the machine failed with a communication error to the barfeeder. They came out and could not figure out the problem, and after 5 visits and replacing cables, servo controller, MOCON board and numerous calls to Haas in Oxnard...they said it was a software problem and all I had to do is ture off the temp compensation. Well this worked to make the machine run but it was disabling one of the functions of the machion. Well while they were trying to figure out the communication problem the spindle motor started making a dry bearing type of sound. This would only happen when first started and would go away quickly while running. Now I'm the kinda guy that warms his machines up before running them, so this noise would go away before I would use it, and before the Haas tech would arrive every morning. It took a couploe of months before they heard the noise and desided that the spindle motor had to be replaced. During this time I was running a small diameter job that required 3/8 diameter 303 stock, and this is when I found out that the barfeeder would not feed stock this small in diameter. The barfeeder would crash into it's self....the pusher would clear the v-tray at the rear but would drag and catch toward the front. The barfeeder pusher was out of alignment with the feeder by over 1/4 of an inch!! So again they were here trying to figure out what to do with this problem when another new problem showed up. A new job required a .078 hole with a fair depth So I got out the old indicators and a test bar and started to check the machine out. Boy I was bummed!! The turret was all over the place, some times some positions the turret would only have a few tenths runout in 3 inches of travel, and other times it would have up .0028 runout in the Z axis. Plus this was random with it going all over the turret!!
So picture this...Here they were still trying to figure out the fix for the communication problems and now they have a spindle problem and a barfeeder problem and now the turret crap, when the barfeeder controller up and dies. Now at this time I had less that 200 running hours on this machine and I have totaled up their service time at around 90 hours!! I was pissed and told them to get this lemon piece of junk out of my shop and replace it with a new machine.!! They told me that there was no such thing as a "lemon" machine tool and that they would not replace it only fix it! Well after many many visits they replaced the turret, the spindle motor, the proccessor, mocon twice, floppy drive, barfeed controller twice, and dismembered the barfeeder and reamed out screw holes to make the thing line up and said "see ya later" The barfeed controller went out along with the motor after the warrenty was up. And when they sent out replacement parts from Oxnard, the parts were dirty and greasy that looked like they pulled the controller out of some old machine in the back lot...plus the first one they sent didn't work and they had to send a replacment for the replacement. The z axis servo amp went out shortly after the warrenty also, and when I went troubleshooting in the power cabinet I found that the fans under the drives and in the door were all unplugged. I screamed that this looked like the service guy on his last trip here unplugged the fans and I have had it and that my lawyer was taking it from here. Well they gave me a new drive...big fat deal after all they pulled. My lawyer wouldn't touch it, so I am just out. So now I don't do anything of any precision with the SL20 and put up with the stupid things it does. Then today the A axis drive started erroring out and died. So that brings me to why I was lookin on the internet for Haas parts and Haas BS.
SO MY WORD TO ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO BUY A HAAS....BUY SOMETHING ELSE AND DO NOT BUY A HAAS LATHE. Sorry to ramble, but really this is the readers digest version of the story because I could go on and on with more goodies about this machine. And if someone out there is planning a class action against Haas, I have a BIG file of notes and dates that I would share. At the time I did post my experiences and found that I was not alone with the Haas turret issues. Thanks, Ray

[DEAN]

That is a ugly story.
Were you dealing with your HFO or HAAS directly??

[miljnor]

That is an ugly story. And I am sure tha every machine manufacturer on the planet with very few exceptions has had a bum machine or two come out of their plant (its in the odds).

So I am realy bummed for you but you don't build crap machines if you own 85% of the market man it just dosn't happen. Now I know these machines are NOWhere near the top of the list but they FAR from the bottom.

You just had some bad luck/service/luck and maybe need to let it go, move on and most likely have way better luck with another machine tool and go on to make Huge amounts of money! (hopefully, after all you can't have that bad of luck! right?)

[mannster]

I had to take over running an SL-10 after taking over for some guy that used it for over 2 years. He got to use it brand new.
I have to say, that it runs GREAT ! The controls are a breeze, the probe tool setter is DEADLY accurate! and the parts come out consistently.
This machine WAS abused for those first 2 years. Large parts were often run at too high rpms (there are dents all over the inside sheetmetal), the turret was crashed into the chuck many times, and round bars were stuck out past the spindle bore, and whipped. Oh, did I mention that maintenance was not a "priority" at that time?
I like it !!! It is a nice machine and I can call Haas anytime to ask any sort of silly questions I may have.

I dont want to discredit the negative post, but I certainly don't want it to be the only opinion out there.

Regardless of which brand you buy, you should compare:

1) Overall cost for machines with similar specs.
2) Availability of technical support over the phone.
3) How long does it take to get a service technician to the machine.
4) How long does it take to get replacement parts.
5) Cost of similar replacement parts.

ALL MACHINES will need something fixed at some point. The answers to the
questions above can make or break you.

[gripper]

Hi, we had a Haas lathe and it burnt out the spindle motor while the service engineer was commisioning in the machine! We had some of the same problems as Neoman had. We Had Haas take the lathe back which they did. We had a shop full of Haas mills(which are pretty good) so I guess they didn't want to lose any more orders for them.
We replaced the Haas with a Takisawa and never looked back.

[Geof]

It is interesting reading the recent posts after the horror story. My first Haas was a HL1 made in 1995 which I bought in 1999. It had low hours because the two previous owners had gone broke. The X axis servo amp needed fixed within a few months but since then nothing except we rigged a blower to cool the dump resistor for spindle braking when doing bar work with frequent stops for the barfeeder. Next lathe was a HL1-Big Bore made in 1997 which I bought unused from Haas in 2001. Showroom clearout at a 46.8% discount from the as new price. Apart from my guy using a parting tool holder as a spindle brake at 2000 rpm we have had no trouble and even that crash only took about four hours to re-align the turret. In the last three years I have bought two SL10s; one of these kept giving a spindle drive overheat alarm so I insisted the drive be replaced before the end of the warranty, the other has run fine for just over a year now except for a software problem that was fixed. So overall I can say I am very satisfied with Haas machines. I just got a TL1 with the new four place tool changer and full enclosure so I hope I can stay satisfied.

[stavrou.vyronas]

Haas is good as long you are not a demanding user.For instance try this material
ss316 and this 65mm diam. vc165 d.o.c5mm fn0.5mm. If someone is whants sturdy, bullet proof machine he will go for okuma, mori, emco, dmg, mazak and so on.

[miljnor]

OH NO here we go again!

I agree that some of those machines are deffinitaly better than a haas for certain apps.

BUT i started business doing 316L up to 10"diam and have had 0 (zero) problems with .200" depth of cut 300-500sfm. That kinda data is more relative to type of cutting tool than machine. Unless you exceed the HP rating of the machine.

[SND]

A place I worked at had some trouble with the SL20. Brand new machine. A few inches from the chuck the turret jumps about .001" which leaves a line. Also when they got it, it took a while to figure out what was going on with the toolsetter. Tools were off all over the place. I think the whole thing had to be recalibrated. I don't know exactly as I didn't run cnc's.

The haas mill also had some troubles. Z-axis top limit switch died so it thought home was somewhere below the table.


I wouldn't feel very confident buying one myself. If you deal with tight deadlines and you can't afford to have a machine down. Mazak or something like that would be better I think. More money but less worries.