Newbie- BUYING USED HAAS CNC

[gangpw924]

what to look for buying USED 1994-1999 Haas CNC lathe and Mill, such as SL20, VF-0, VF-1? Spindles hours? Gearbox?

How much they should cost in good condition?

Any suggestions are welcome

[Machineit]

Originally Posted by gangpw924 what to look for buying USED 1994-1999 Haas CNC lathe and Mill, such as SL20, VF-0, VF-1? Spindles hours? Gearbox? How much they should cost in good condition? Any suggestions are welcome

Dear gangpw924,

I would start by getting on ebay and searching for the models you are interested in. This will give you a good idea of what is available and what the prices are at this time. They will vary of course in price and condition. Most of those who are selling are dealers and you can deal with them on the price and a price will be listed.

Unfortunately dealers in magazines or just on-line don't generally want to give prices in their ads. It is a real pain to have to contact them and give them all of your info to get a simple quote.

If you are really serious about buying, I would make arrangements to look at the machines yourself or have a local dealer or someone else you trust check them out. Most dealers will give a short warranty, but you need to travel to them to check it out or to get your money back you will have to pay shipping both directions. Not good and very expensive.

One final piece of advice. Try to find a machine with tooling, even if it costs much more. To tool a lathe and a mill will cost you a ton, maybe $10,000 to $25,000. You would need vices (only buy good ones) tool holders (probably 40) just for the mill and then you will need endmills, drills, reamers, and on and on.

I found A VF-3 for a business I was working for about 1 1/2 years ago on ebay. I added up the prices of the many vices, tooling, rotary table and all the came with it and the tooling alone was worth $28,000. The mill was priced to sell, at a buy-it-now of only $30,000. They were very short sighted and passed it up. They later bought two VF-2's that were absolutely junk and I spent months getting them running. Plus, they gave me only $5,000 total to tool up two mills. Only imported junk vices etc., it was a disaster. Remember a good Kurt vise will cost $800.00+. Import vises are not worth the money. I have had them break right in two.

Run it to make sure the spindle is quiet and smooth in BOTH high and low gears. People will sometimes try to hide a bad transmission by just firing it up and running only in high gear. A bad transmission generally makes no noise at all in high gear, it is direct drive then. But, they can re replaced if you find a real buy!

Good luck with your search and you might show us what you find and ask opinions.

Cheers---Mike

[dingo0722]

I bought a 96 VF2 for $21k. The only options it had was 4 meg memory and a 10k rpm spindle, wish it had a chip augor though. It had less than 3000 spindle hours and 11000 on hours. When I bought the machine I spent 2 hours with a cnc tech going over the machine to make sure it all checks out
I would also not buy a machine older than 96. reason being that older machines dont have the 710IPM rappid brushless servos