buy an old Haas

[Karl_T]

My son is hot after his first CNC mill. He's an experienced machinist with five years in the field. He's hot to buy this machine:
HAAS VF1 1992 | eBay

He knows it has a lot of wear and needs mechanical rebuild. I'm not worried that he's up to the task here. Now he's not an electrician, that will fall to me. I've not worked with Haas, is the control computer basically a PC? (That's what he told me) Are control parts easy to find and cheap? Are good manuals available? In general can an electrician from other equipment easily repair this machine?

Any other electrical concerns I should know about?

karl

[gizmo_454]

This machine, while still having potential, is getting old enough, you may or may not have a hard time finding some parts. My advice, and I think I speak for a good many on here, find out where it is located and have the local Haas Factory Outlet send out a technician to get a non-biased opinion on the condition of the machine. It will be a few hundred dollars that may save you thousands.

As to your questions:

The Haas control is NOT PC based. It is proprietary. Any parts you need will have to come from Haas, unless you are lucky enough to find some used parts on ebay or from parts machines.

Few machine parts are cheap. Especially from the manufacturer. We had a drive go out on our Citizen swiss machine last year. There were none of that type available. Our options were to spend $12,000 for the retrofit to a newer drive, or $2500, and 2 weeks down time to have the old one rebuilt.

Manuals are available. The operator manuals can be downloaded from Haas' website. The service manual you have to buy from Haas. I am not sure what their price is for it.

Electrical/control components, being proprietary, are not really user serviceable. In fact, the service techs are not really trained to know complete diagnostics. Their general policy is to find what is causing the problem, and replace it. So if it is a processor board, they don't diagnose the exact circuit, they just replace the whole board. Small things, to a certain extent, can be fixed. We fixed the green light on our beacon by replacing a bad resistor in the beacon. But not all fixes are that simple.

All, in all, you have to consider that you are looking at a 20 year old machine. If the tech checks it out and gives it the thumbs up, have fun! If he calls with a laundry list, I would look for another machine since it will likely cost more than you paid for the machine to get it fixed.

Good luck!
Mike

[underthetire]

Good advise !

[Machineit]

I happened to be following that machine just out of curiosity.

It does say that it is a fully working machine, so boards and such should be fine. He does call the spindle into question, so I would get more information from him about that. He says they run it a 800-1200 all of the time, so what is it cutting, sounds like it could be steels. In that range it would generally be in low gear all of the time, so check the transmission along with the spindle.

The exhaust is a curiosity as that sounds like they were machining something that they used a vacuum system on, like graphite, so check that.

They are fun little machines. I had the exact same machine, which by the way is still in service at my old shop.

I recommend that you do as already mentioned and send someone to give it a quick look over. It would be money well spent.

But, on a positive note that rotary table, that is with it is worth about $2,000 to $2,500, so if sold will offset much of the repair cost if there are any.

Cheers---Mike

[haastec]

You have received some great advise on things already.

+1 for having it checked out. It's worth at least a couple hours of service time to have it checked out and make sure all the systems at least function.

They will most likely be able to give you some ideas on what is going on with the spindle and/or gearbox. You can also ask the local HFO for any service records they may have.

Good luck!

[ducesrwld]

if i was going to buy an older machine i'd try to stay '97-98 vintage there were a lot of changes around that time. but for a small budget an old haas is going to be about the safest bet for parts availability, service, etc. the control is about the easiest to learn and the control hasn't changed much compared to the new machines. For about $500 bucks to have a haas service tech to come out and check over everything should be a no brainer.

[Machineit]

if i was going to buy an older machine i'd try to stay '97-98 vintage there were a lot of changes around that time. but for a small budget an old haas is going to be about the safest bet for parts availability, service, etc. the control is about the easiest to learn and the control hasn't changed much compared to the new machines. For about $500 bucks to have a haas service tech to come out and check over everything should be a no brainer.

Any newer machine would have to be non-operational to get anywhere near that price. As far as differences in the newer machines, most all of it is just rapid speeds and brushless servos. Otherwise the software is pretty much identical and so is the control. It's a good machine to start with at a very reasonable price.

You are right, no machine easier to get parts for and easy to learn.

Mike

[autotechsteve]

Just search this forum and another forum I can't mention here for 1991 Haas VF-1 and you will find that servicing these machines is not bad at all. All of the parts are still available and the machines themselves, while not as fancy and fast as the new machines, are still rock solid on the inside. Good luck, and if you are looking to sell the rotary table, let me know.
Steve

[Machineit]

Well, it ended last night, did you buy it?