Haas TM-1 Production question.

Long time lurker here. First post.

I have a 2011 Haas TM-1 in the shop. Mainly used for jobs here and there, she is a great machine that gets the job done, she only has 3066 M30 cycles counted.

I have a production run coming up that my boss dropped on me today. 4,800 acrylic parts that need 3 holes on a bolt circle.(thats 14,000+ holes for the shock value) I'm worried that the action of starting and stopping my machine from 0-4000 rpm and back that many times, in such short periods, can cause damage or excessive wear. I am basically looking at doubling the amount of spindle operations the machine has had in its entire lifetime in a matter of a week. Does anyone have any experience in this? Would keeping the spindle running all day be more beneficial?

I've already told my boss to expect to replace the spindle belt after the run, but I'm more concerned about its failure during the run. Worse than that, the failure of the spindle itself. Am I too paranoid?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Can you add another vise or two so you can have multiple parts on the table so you can cut the number of starts and stops by half third or even more if you have room.?

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I have a TM-1 that I'm milling graphite with. 4000 rpm isn't all that fast. I'm maxing the spindle all the time. I don't think you have anything to worry about. If I had 10k rpm, and would use it all of the time, I'd start the spindle at 1000, and accelerate before the cut, to manage the load.

The plan is to stack the parts 2 high. I'm doing 14 inch disks with a modified table chuck. Each disk is a different size because of the large tolerance the factory has. I;m hoping for the best but worst case is 1 part at a time.

I think 4000rpm on acrylic is going to melt it. I'd slow down your rpm and not worry about it.

I had a tm-1 that I tweaked the parameters on to get the spindle up to 6500 rpm and ran it like that for 6 years. I did all sorts of mean things to tjat poor little mill before I had a real machining center. 1000lbs parts on the table, leaving it run at max rpm overnight running "complex" 3d surfaces. You are being way too paranoid.

I'm going to attempt to say this without sounding like a jerk... But its going to be HARD...

Are you F'n serious??? You are worried about 4800 cycles on a 4k spindle... Does HAAS really
suck that bad???

Figure on a standard VMC, you are going to get somewhere around 20k hours on a standard spindle if you
don't crash it constantly... Figure less if its a high rev spindle...

4800 starts and stops.. If the tool is running for 1 minute each, that's only 80 hours.

Watch a video of a robodrill or a speedio.. They can ramp up and down to 10k+ like 10 times in a
minute, and they will run for years and years and years and years and years....... AND YEARS!!!!

New spindle belts??? after 4800 stop start cycles??? HAAS is GONNNNAAAA LOVE YOU.

New spindle belts is not on the same maintenance cycle as "add waylube"

And we are only talking about 4,000 RPMs !!!!! A Bridgeport runs faster than that.

YES!!!!!! you are too fricken paranoid... You should be able to run that job 100's of times before
you would have to worry about anything..... Unless Haas really sucks that bad.

If the cycle times are that short I would do what I do with my speeder and program a S1000 as mentioned already before the tool position then an s4000 at the position. On my TM when I 'surface' my parts stepping down .001" between passes and measuring in between I program it on a loop and leave the spindle running just because the rev up/down irritates my ears. It has a G4P1. and I let it step a few times then pause, measure ect without the spindle stopping (door locks disabled, body parts in the mill while spindle on yada yada all dumb and dangerous etc)

If the tolerance on the parts is as loose as you implied I'd consider putting a plate on the table. engrave a few diameter rings say 13.98, 14.00 14.02, 14.04 and throw some toggle clamps or even strap clamps with acrylic 'spacer' for the clamp to not damage. I machine 180 15x9" plates at a time to make 4,000 parts on my TM several times a year. OP1 I stack the plates 4 tall and drill all the holes just like this. Since mine are rectangle I have dowel pins for alignment. Since yours are round if you engrave a couple circles you can eyeball .01-.02 accuracy and stack 3 or 6 plates on top centering each 'smaller' one on the one below it. If you have to debur that will take far more time. If it saves you 1/2 the loading time that's probably 25% of the overall time.

I'm frequently surprised how accurately the eyeball can split the difference on two sides. Like eyeballing a hole off by .007" on a 1/4 part is pretty damn obvious. With the rings at .02" you can probably hit .005 or better if you stand them up and sort 4 of them biggest to smallest of the 4 so the bigger one is on bottom while it drills the ones on the mill.

As far as 4000 spindle cycles... Ive done that in a week more than a few times on my TM2P and I replaced the OEM 22mm (iirc) belt with an 11mm. The same set up is used on 15hp machines so the belt, bearings etc are over the top on my little motor. Hell of a lot quieter too.

With a plate that large I'd put some emphasis on how you hold it (single or stacked), and the tooling you'll use for cutting the parts. Chip evacuation and edge prep are of interest to make sure you manage heat and the tendency for acrylic to draw itself up a spiral flute tool.

And as the others have said, no worries on the spindle life, unless there's some inherent problem with the machine due to bad manufacture it'll be fine.

Kingbob said:

I had a tm-1 that I tweaked the parameters on to get the spindle up to 6500 rpm and ran it like that for 6 years . . .

Click to expand...

Bob, would be kind enough to tell me how you did that. I have heard of that before but my research has been unsuccessful.

saltfever said:

Bob, would be kind enough to tell me how you did that. I have heard of that before but my research has been unsuccessful.

Click to expand...

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/haas/successfully-increasing-spindle-speeds-tm1-280191/

Many Thanks, Dangle for that link.