opinion on HAAS Vmc

hello,
we are machining heavy aluminium permanent mold castings most of the time and looking to replace our old makino fnc 60, we have been looking at haas for some time . we need to run high speeds and feeds using end mills and plenty of big bores with mostly H7 and H8 tolerances.
we need some experiences and opinions before we take a decision. Currently the attraction towards haas is price and performance but we have no ideas abt maintance and long term performance.

thanks
rags

your not going to run a haas like a makino

if what you want is entry level medium to light duty
haas is fine
support is fair to good

I would also verify Haas' support in India (parts, applications and service)... Support in the US is pretty good, but in India it could be a different story. Course same thing goes for Makino and other mfg's as well.

I am a pretty big fan of Haas. However, I do take them for what they are, that is a good machine that can take a good amount of material off and produce good results on a consistant basis.

You mention you need to take large amounts of material off in a hurry, on a regular basis, Haas may not be the correct machine of choice for that application. Heavy cuts I find can tax the machines and tooling as the machines are somewhat "lite-duty linear machines". I tend to add an extra cut or two to give consistant results when compared to one of my more robust machines. For me it makes sence as I don't have that much heavy roughing and an extra minute or two for an extra pass on an operation does not make much of a difference at the end of my day.

Service in my area is pretty good, a big plus compared to other brands.

Hmmm

Just found one more headache with our HAAs VMC (VF! and VF4)

our three-shift -running machines makes our haas make about 2500 tool changes in 24 hours.

On the Haas they have DC motors for the shuttle fwd/rev .

I was getting frequent Alarm 114 (shuttle in fault). After struggling with relays and I/o boards
and unsuccessful attempts by our HAAS service people ,I found the fault myself.

The carbon brushes were worn out ( no spare from haas ) .
So I ground some local brushes into the required shape .Fine.

Conclusion if you have frequent tool changes dont go for HAAS !
but You are Keen on the HAAs ( price) then see if they can give you one without a dc motor!

MJM
Chennai
India