fadal and haas

[fourperf]

I posted this in the fadal forum but got no responses so I will post it here

Does anyone here own a haas and a fadal mill? I have a Fadal TRM and want to buy another mill and dont know if I want to invest in another fadal or not. I know the Fadal control quite well so on one hand I would like to stick with fadal but it seems haas is way more of a stable company now and I am not sure about Fadal. Anyway my question is how easy is the transition into the haas control? Does it require a lot of training or can you dive right in and figure it out. I use solidworks/camworks so I would have a pp written for the haas. I am going to keep my trm. what to do about tooling? I suppose in the beginning I can just buy haas pull studs and share the cat 40 toolholders.

thanks

mark

[Donkey Hotey]

It's kind of hard to believe that Haas & Fadal were across the street from each other ten years ago, huh?

Does Fadal even make the TRM anymore? I would imagine that you're upgrading to something bigger but I went to their website just about a week ago looking for the TRM. It was nowhere to be found.

And it's ironic because that was exactly the machine I was going to look at (Fadal TRM) as I was cutting through the Haas booth at 2002 Westec. Back then, the TRM was a wild dream. Gene Saltis of Haas intercepted me and the rest is history. Today, I own two Haas machines.

Based on what you already know about the Fadal, I'd at least give one a serious look. They must do something to remain competitive in the market (cost, performance, rigidity...something).

As for the transition to the Haas control, I don't know: I've only owned Haas and this was my first real CNC machine experience. With what I know about transitioning to different CAD programs, once you've learned the basics, the skills move pretty easily.

The same has to be true of the controls. Once you know your way around G-code, setting tool and work offsets and changing machine parameters, it's only a matter of finding where they are in the new control. I've found the Haas to be very easy to use.

And if you're doing your programming offline, you won't even care about the editor anyway. It'll be about storing and running the programs.

[billystein]

I have a 4020 fadal. an older model that was retrofitted last year. I really like the older fadal control. I believe it to be one of the simplest to use . I am awaiting a new mini mill on 1-17-8. I have used a haas control on a tl25 lathe. the transition should be seemless. I think haas is everywhere now. You should be able to get a post pretty easily. most of the code from fadal will go right in if you wanted to modify your existing post.


billy

[fourperf]

Thanks guys. On one hand I would like to stick with fadal but it makes me nervous with all the times they have been sold. I do like the fadal control but is it stupid to buy such and old and slow control? It just seems like haas makes a better machine. I dont know. I have one fadal now and I have owned two of them and they have been pretty good to me.

[bmartin]

I have worked on both over the years. I would say Haas over Fadal. The only thing I liked on the Fadels was how fast you can pick up all your offsets once you got to know the shortcut keys.