New EC-400, what options should we have?

[Crash]

We are about to purchase a new Haas EC-400 horizontal mill. This will be our first horizontal machine. I am interested in what other shops think of the options they have or wish they had bought. Which ones are a waste of money? Which ones can't you do without? We are a manufacturer of prosthetic components and medical devices, and currently have a number of vertical machining centers and CNC lathes, so we are not new to CNC, just to horizontal machines.


thanks

[WOLOG]

I would get the pallet pool and 1000 psi TSC for sure.

[rickyt]

I have ran EC-400,s for about a year and if you can keep them running they do ok.
We have problems with the tool changer arms alarming out and loosing their home postion. Had to replace the Y-Axis ball screw and the machine was less than a year old. Upgraded to 16m memory, when using large files the contoller is very slow. The machines I ran had 12000rpm 40 tools and extra rapids. they were not hard to program just us a main and subs and everythings ok. When you go to a Horizontal machine you get what you pay for. Haas horizontals are on the cheap side so I would shop around and find the medium priced machine, you will not be sorry. I would check Mazak, Kit. or look for used Mori.

[INTENSE CNC]

We have issues with coolant not getting back to the pump fast enough on our EC-400. I would upgrade to the programmable coolant also.

[big_mak]

What options to get?

All that you can afford!!!!!!!!!!?????

But really HSM is always a good bet. LAt thing you need is a machine that starts to cut corners, when you start pushing feedrates.

A little birdie told me that the machines shipping with the floppy will eventually have USB coming with them, or the USB will replace the floppy altogether.
Depending on how many programs you want to leave in the machine memory upgrade, or the harddrive/ethernet option.