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Haas VF3 Troubles

nicholisc

Plastic
Joined
Dec 21, 2006
Location
las vegas,nv
Hi all!
We just purchased a Haas VF3 vintage 1995. It has extended Z and appears to be well optioned. The machine I previously worked with was an old Milltronics CNC kneemill. No tool changer, this Haas is all new to me.
We are having a few problems that I am hoping someone can assist with.
The machine was checked out by the Haas service center before being loaded and shipped. The machine checked out well with no problems. The machine only has 40,000 tool changes which we were told by Haas is not very many. The Haas rep also stated that this machine was almost like new. This purchase was from a private party.

1. Does anybody know what manuals this machine originally came with? I ask because the only manual we received was a 3 ring binder about 2.5" thick. Were there any other operators manuals that would have originally come with the machine?

2. I cannot get the machine to do a tool change. When I tell the machine to go to tool 6 it stays stationary at pocket one. I think the machine is trying to remove a tool from the spindle that does not exist (there is no tool in the spindle).

Does anyone know how to tell the machine that the spindle and the carousel are empty?

How do you install tools in the spindle?

I recognize that these are basic questions but I cannot find any information in the manual to cover these basic operations. Can any body help?
 
1) Sounds like the manual I got with my machine. Online might help. I managed with just that manual and I couldn't even spell CNC!

2) As Huflungdung mentioned you need to home the tool changer first. At power up you will need to clear any alarms using the cancel button, then press power up/restart. Now you should be able to press "MDI/DNC" button and then either "ATC FWD" or ATC/REV" to maually change to the next tool. From a program you do "T#" and M06 for a tool change.

The machine does not know if there is a tool in the spindle or changer, it will perform a tool change on air.

You put the tool in the spindle and do a manual tool change to load it into the changer.

grant
 
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Does this have a side mount tool changer? If so you will need to populate the tool table so that it knows there are tools in the carousel.
 
J.P.: That's interesting, the side mount detects tools loaded? I'm not sure you could get the side mount option on the older small machines.

Yeah, because of the random nature of the side mount tool changers, the control has to keep track of where each tool is. Tool 1 is almost never in pocket 1.
 
It not that it detects which tools are loaded, but it has to keep track of which tool is where. As Matt said every time you do a tool change on a side mount ATC the tools swap places, unless they are large tools and flagged as such.

Just go to the offsets page and page up like 3 times to get to the tool population table. Make sure to populate it with tools so it knows what is where. tool numbers can be 1-200 on there.
 








 
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