One Million Tool Changes On Sl10

[Geof]

We have a SL10 which was bought 02/02 that went over 1,000,000 tool changes during the past week. Occasionally people post asking about Haas machines so I decided I would give our experience with this machine. It is used more than 99.9% of the time on bar work ranging from 1/4" to 1-3/8" dia. in brass, aluminum, leaded steel, stainless steel and Delrin. We have a shop designed and built hydraulic barfeed which advances the bar with the spindle running and the design of the barfeed limits it to 4000 rpm maximum for ten to fifteen seconds and 3000 rpm for extended operation. This means we have never used the full 6000 rpm capacity. However we did do some time trials and found on many of our parts the difference in cycle times between running at 2000 to 3000 max and 6000 max was only a few percent. Furthermore, many times the cycles were longer at higher rpm which is probably due to the decceleration/acceleration time down to a suitable speed for parting and barfeed and then back up to the high speed; our per part cycle times are often very short.

Problems requiring service have been practically zero.

During the six month warranty period some problems occurred with the spindle drive shutting down with an overheat alarm. This was when running a short cycle (35seconds) chucking job that we ran at 4500 rpm before the barfeed was installed. I insisted that the spindle drive be replaced before the end of the warranty period and the problem disappeared and has never surfaced again.

Shortly after the warranty expired it started leaking coolant, badly. This turned out to be because the drain holes in the bottom of the chip auger trough blocked up with Delrin chips and the bolts holding the auger motor had not been fully tightened so the coolant leaked there when the level came up. We fixed this and sent Haas a terse letter.

At around 750,000 tool changes the coolant pump motor quit because the starting switch was worn. We switched the pump form on off one of our other machines and I did a crude repair to the faulty switch which is still working.

About a year ago the controller came up with the corrupted program alarm while a program was being edited. We couldn't solve it by the standard procedure of SAVE ALL, DELETE ALL and then reloading the saved file; the service tech had to reload the system.

Maintaining tolerances.

Many of our parts have a tolerance around +/-0.001; we do a 15 minute warm up in the morning and can run the remainder of a ten hour shift without tweaking anything except for tool wear on the leaded steel parts. Some parts are a bit tighter and to keep at +/-0.0002 it is necessary to tweak things as the machine warms up; once it is warm again it is just tool wear that has to be corrected.

Would I buy another one? Yes; I think Haas is good value for money. If we were bashing away at iron castings or doing everything in stainless maybe it would be a different matter but this machine has made us a lot more money than it cost.

[miljnor]

I have never really looked at my tool changes. I've had some of these machines since 1998 and have run production on them for the last 3.5years. I should be there or close to it.

I think they are wonderful machines!

Although last year I had to spend nearly 40k on machinery repairs, but it turned out that we had some stupidity issues regarding passing of information to the boss (me) and after these were worked out some employees eliminated we have had no more issues!

I think the most I've spent on maintenance this year has been 30.00 for some new way cover wipers (oh and my accounting year starts in September so don't remind me its only January )

[Geof]

Originally Posted by miljnor I have never really looked at my tool changes....

Diagnostics screen and page down once. But you probably alreadt know that.

[miljnor]

but thanks anyway!


I can't state it enough these are great machines FOR the money!

of course if I won the lottery and got some machinery given to me well it might be something else! ..... maybe!

[Edster]

I've got an 02 SL-10. 350,000 toolchanges. 3500 power on hours 1500 motion hours. I hope I make it to 1 million without any problems. The machine is running great Btw.

[miljnor]

I just looked at my oldest lathe (a 1998) and only have 850k tool changes on it!

So you are using the hell out of that thing Geof!

[Geof]

Originally Posted by miljnor I just looked at my oldest lathe (a 1998) and only have 850k tool changes on it! So you are using the hell out of that thing Geof!

Yup. And making money doing it!

[mulcher]

the company i work for just bought a bran new 2006 SL 30 big bore v.o.p (value option package) have been running it for about 8 months now . the service tecs had to replace the gear box in the first 3 months because of belt miss alingmen once they did this it got rid of the horible noise it made in high gear at about 1200 rpm .but then about 2 weeks later the nut that holds the lead screw started to back off and made a horable slaping noise. called techs and they fixed did not damage lead screw. been good so far ,now having a software problem on one particular program i can run the program fine for a while but it seems like after working it hard it will not reconize the m30 properly .it resets its self to the start of the program but will start the program and dwell ,you must manualy reset to turn spindle on and debure this is very dangerouse but can be worked around .still waiting for aplacation techs to look at always seems to happen at bad times. to bussy to wait for techs . machine sill on warrenty but service is very slow here in edmonton alberta canada (make mainly oilfield parts 1018,4130,4140,p110 and stainless steal or C12L14 material some times brass). machine must have been made on a friday lol. any one out there have any similler problems ,otherwise a great machine.

[miljnor]

I love the HAAS, can't beat it for the money!

But that is a lemon and I would really hassle the factory and get that thing replaced. It isn't your job to troubleshoot their problems.

California has the lemon law and it applies to all products not just cars. You should check on your side of the boarder to see if you can enforce something like that.

[msomerville]

A lot of the problems I have read about HAAS are the machines that seem to have been made in the last couple of years. The older HAAS, from what I have read, seem to keep truckin'. While the newer ones are riddled with problems. I don't know if its because they are trying to pump out a ton of machines or what. All of this hearsay is steering me towards Daewoo.

[miljnor]

I know of allot of people that buy HAAS, none of them have ANY problems.

What I think you are seeing is the Internet has a tendency to go off of rumors and innuendo. Maybe true maybe not, but also CNCZone is a large pool of people so you are bound to hear horror stories.

I wouldn't steer away from them just based off of rumor though.

Most of the people I know that own HAAS will still buy more when needed.

[msomerville]

I wouldn't base any decisions on rumor alone. I was just leaning towards Daewoo to begin with, and the rumors of all of the trouble they have had in the past couple of years just pushed me the other way.