Thinking of dumping our crappy Haas mills. Anyone running Haas 5 axis rotaries?
Over the past couple years, not knowing any better, I bought 4 Haas verticals for the shop I started from scratch. First machine I got was an 2006 VF2 with almost no extra options. It has given me almost no problems. The other 3 machines I bought were new VF-3SS models with though tool coolant, 40 tools, and 5 axis options installed. I combined each VF3 with a Haas TR-160 rotary.
This whole setup has been horribly unreliable since day one. My new Haas machines all arrived with problems right out of the box. Now that the warranties have expired, I'm literally spending WELL over $10k per machine annually in repairs, and that's with an independent tech. It was way worse using service from the local HFO. These machines are less than 2 years old. They are down probably 20% of the time. The rotaries are worse, I now have two spares because they break so much. I spend another $5k rebuilding each rotary about once per year, if I'm lucky. So that's $15k+ for the rotary / machine combination every year in repairs.
Is just me, or is this pretty ridiculous? The repair costs are bad enough, but the constant downtime is becoming too much to handle. We run aluminum on these machines 24 hours a day, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that Haas machines aren't built for round the clock production.
Does it seem worthwhile to sell our Haas mills, take the ~30% hit in depreciation, and go to something more expensive like the Okuma M560? I have no experience with any 5 axis rotary other than Haas. Are the Nikken trunnions better, or will they need be rebuilt every year too? Last thing I want to do is buy more expensive rotaries only to find out they don't last any longer and cost even more to repair than the Haas.
Over the past couple years, not knowing any better, I bought 4 Haas verticals for the shop I started from scratch. First machine I got was an 2006 VF2 with almost no extra options. It has given me almost no problems. The other 3 machines I bought were new VF-3SS models with though tool coolant, 40 tools, and 5 axis options installed. I combined each VF3 with a Haas TR-160 rotary.
This whole setup has been horribly unreliable since day one. My new Haas machines all arrived with problems right out of the box. Now that the warranties have expired, I'm literally spending WELL over $10k per machine annually in repairs, and that's with an independent tech. It was way worse using service from the local HFO. These machines are less than 2 years old. They are down probably 20% of the time. The rotaries are worse, I now have two spares because they break so much. I spend another $5k rebuilding each rotary about once per year, if I'm lucky. So that's $15k+ for the rotary / machine combination every year in repairs.
Is just me, or is this pretty ridiculous? The repair costs are bad enough, but the constant downtime is becoming too much to handle. We run aluminum on these machines 24 hours a day, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that Haas machines aren't built for round the clock production.
Does it seem worthwhile to sell our Haas mills, take the ~30% hit in depreciation, and go to something more expensive like the Okuma M560? I have no experience with any 5 axis rotary other than Haas. Are the Nikken trunnions better, or will they need be rebuilt every year too? Last thing I want to do is buy more expensive rotaries only to find out they don't last any longer and cost even more to repair than the Haas.
Seriously though, if you need to do that volume I would probably look elsewhere too. As for the nikken, we had a small (I think the smallest one they make for a 5c adapter) 5 axis unit. We had it on a 2012 (I think) robodrill and we had problems with the A axis returning to the reference zero. Don't know if this was the table or machine, but the Fanuc guys couldn't fix it for us. 
