Which Probing System?

[jimgarner]

Haas offers the Marposs probing system at $2,995 and the Visual Quick Probing System at $4,995. Can anyone shed any light on which system to get for a tool room mill. What does the extra $2,000 get you, if anything, eg easier to use, more capability, etc. or did Marposs just offer them a better deal than Renishaw?

Thanks,

Jim

[axis]

the renshaw probing system is more accurate that is why it is an option on the tm only they figure you wont notice
p.s. the tool offset is not a laser tool finder

[wcbob]

The reinshaw probing/ tool setter with VQC is so easy to learn and use you also get the ability to do in process inspection with the spindle probe. Inspection takes a little macros program but haas can send you a book and the control comes loaded with the programs. Also look at the price if you owned some other cnc and added probing it would cost 10,000 haas probing under 5,000 good luck

[phil2279]

I just bought a Haas Tm-1 about 2 months ago with the renshaw probe system and VQC. This was the best option I decided to get with the mill. I can set up quick prototypes and offsets super fast and use the probe to check parts after machining, especially if the part is complex. The VQC is great for making quick programs. You can also learn to make your own VQC templates, which I am looking forward to learning for some of my parts that use the same contours but at different scales and sizes. The probe kit also unlocks user defined macros, rotating & scaling, and spindle orientation. You would have to buy these 3 options without the probe kit. For $5000, is a good bang for the buck! If you havent bought the mill yet, get the chip pan extensions. I regret not getting them when I bought my machine. I added them to contain the chips and cut out my own lexan side shields that fit inside the lip of the extensions with automotive trim tape instead of drilling holes in the machine. You will save alot in shipping buying them with the machine.

[crowley]

I just confirmed that when you buy the less expensive Marposs system, you get rotation, scaling, spindle indexing AND intuitive programming in that package. This seems to be very attractive with the Mini MIll, which I am thinking of buying.

Too bad rigid tapping isn't free also.

With the Renishaw system you get visual quick code, but not intuitive programming. I got a short demo of intuitive and feel that for our applications as an R&D shop (not a machine shop, per se) it may be a worthwhile feature to have on the machine. Renishaw SW supports data export for SPC which we liked.

It has been hard to get all the details on the newest HF Marposs from the dealer, who says it is weeks old. The Marposs site ins't up to date. The SW package with the Marposs appears to be powerful. There is provision for data out to develop stats. The probe specs appear to be nearly 1 micron in resolution, which is about 2.5 times better than the best spec from the mill, which is about 0.0001, and the spindle probe appears to operate on the 33cm (903-928 MHz) ISM freq, spread spectrum, user selectable channels.

Wish I knew more, but the big price difference and the collection of unlocks (all that stuff is in there anyway I think) is hard to ignore.

[crowley]

Just thought I would add that we now have the MiniMill with the Marposs system up and running.

I was told we were the first to get this package in New England. The installer had not previously worked with it and it took some time to get it set up and running.

The table probe and tool probe both work with the Intuitive SW.

The Marposs has very little documentation with it, and Haas has almost nothing on it, so it is still quite mysterious. More information is needed and I plan to contact Haas and Marposs to at least provide some writeup or training on how it interfaces with Intuitive SW and also other levels of Haas SW.

The probes appear to be the same kind of robust quality as the Renishaw devices, but the less expensive Marposs uses the wired and pickup probe coupled transmission system. Not quite as elegant, but functionally identical to the RF transmission system.

[crowley]

Just a followup on the Marposs:

We decided to return it after the SW started introducing unaccounted for offset errors and failed to repeat. We went from version 1 up to I think version 10 of the Marposs SW. I thought the Marposs probes were excellent quality and everything about the HW part was excellent, however there were still bugs in the integration with Haas MM.

So, Haas agreed to take it out, credit us, then we pay the extra for the Renishaw, and they will install it Monday. We shall see what the impact of that will be, for instance, the intuitive programming came as standard with the Marposs, not with the Renishaw. If it is removed it isn't such a big deal since we have the external version which is freeware. But there were other things like spindle indexing and rigid tapping that we have now written in to our canned work routines, so if we lose those and have to pay more in the process, we may or may not have spend even more.

I think that the sentencing judge in the Haas case ought to unlock the codes in all US based Haas mills and lathes as part of the sentence and in lieu of the fines. That way the US manufacturing community would get a little boost to offset the loss due to nonpayment of taxes. This would not cost Haas much and would forever endear the company to its customers. I would even petition to get the prison sentence shortened from the 2 year plea bargain if this could be done.

[crowley]

Update on the probing system: The Renishaw system required a day of debugging to run. The Haas rev had to be updated, and now it works with both VQC and intuitive programming, but is quicker on VQC.

The Renishaw is an optically coupled work and table probe, and is much smaller than the Marposs, which is handy on a Mini Mill.

It seems to work much better and performs more measurement checks, has a sane contact speed (Marposs was way too fast) and most importantly, gave us the correct positions and offsets.

Two thousand dollars more, though. The factory sent out their guy to remove the old and put in the new. After a little nudging by us, we got them to finish and confirm the installation.

Let's petition the judge! Unlock all the US machines, and let justice be done!

Bob Crowley
http://microphonium.blogspot.com