DavidScott
Diamond
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2012
- Location
- Washington
I worked at a shop that got a brand new 15XT at the end of 97. We made archery sights, overdraws, and stuff for a fiber optics testing company. It was pretty much all smaller than 2" square aluminum parts. A 3/4" endmill was used as a face mill and 1/4" endmills were the big roughers, the machine was not used hard. These are some of the issues with this machine. Maybe it was a lemon?
1) All axis accel/decel at the same time when rapiding, so when one axis would come to it's stop point ALL axis would decel. What a waste of time!!!
2) The Belleville washers in the drawbar had to be gone through once a year, where I would find around 5-10 that were shattered or cracked. Wait 18 months and the tool holder was loose in the spindle when clamped, grab it with your hand and wiggle it loose! Parts and instructions were per Fadal and I did the work myself so it was done Fadal right.
3) When you cut the power the way lube pump would get pressurized so the plunger was pushed down as long as there was air, it had a spring return. A few years in I noticed it wasn't using any oil. Turns out the plunger got stuck in the down position, the return spring wasn't that strong.
4) The machine didn't know if the drawbar had been depressed before trying to change tools. Because of the oiler problem I would turn the air off to the machine. One time I forgot to turn it on before running it. The first thing it did was try to change a tool. It put the tool in the carousel, then raised the head, with the tool still stuck in the carousel. One of those times you were glad you were just an employee and not the owner.
5) Feed Hold did not work when using the return to start point feature after stopping the program mid cycle and jogging the table around to inspect your work. I learned this while cutting a gear on the 4th axis, thankfully the tool just nipped the gear as it went to the start point. Feen Hold worked for everything else, WTF!!!!
6) You could start the cycle by just lightly brushing the green button with your shoulder. I watched it happen many times.
7) The control would lock up and you were left looking for Ctrl/Alt/Del, which didn't work. You had to cycle to power to recover.
8) SERVO LAGG!!!!! I had to program exact stops all the time to maintain acceptable accuracy. Or say you wanted to increase the feed rate on the countersink, but wanted to maintain the same depth. Easy, just increase the depth by .001" per IPM of feed increase. This was using G81. We were running production so cycle times were important, G82 was too slow so we just did the work around.
9) 15 second chip to chip tool changes if you needed to change speed ranges.
10) In manual mode if you press carousel forward and then realize you meant backward, pressing backward before it was done going forwards, you just renumbered your tool stations by 1, surprise! Hope you're paying attention when you run the program next.
I know there were more but it's been 17 years and I have tried to forget that horror story. As for parts being cheap, well you do get what you pay for. The local spindle rebuilder in Portland once commented to me that without Haas he wouldn't have a business. I asked about Fadal and he said they were the same, just not as many of them around. Reason being the quality of the build so those spindles just didn't last as long as the better builders.
The comment of when something goes wrong with your better Japanese machines you often scrap them because it costs so much for parts is just stupid. Yes, the parts cost more, but you will go through many fewer parts over the years so the total bill probably will be less. The plus side is those machines are soooo much faster, especially if accuracy is important. The draw bar springs in my Kitamura are $1800, but are still original after 20 years and have lost about 3-5% of their hold. If it was a Fadal that would be $1200 for parts, @ 2001 prices, and 20-30 hours of labor. Which do you think is cheaper?
1) All axis accel/decel at the same time when rapiding, so when one axis would come to it's stop point ALL axis would decel. What a waste of time!!!
2) The Belleville washers in the drawbar had to be gone through once a year, where I would find around 5-10 that were shattered or cracked. Wait 18 months and the tool holder was loose in the spindle when clamped, grab it with your hand and wiggle it loose! Parts and instructions were per Fadal and I did the work myself so it was done Fadal right.
3) When you cut the power the way lube pump would get pressurized so the plunger was pushed down as long as there was air, it had a spring return. A few years in I noticed it wasn't using any oil. Turns out the plunger got stuck in the down position, the return spring wasn't that strong.
4) The machine didn't know if the drawbar had been depressed before trying to change tools. Because of the oiler problem I would turn the air off to the machine. One time I forgot to turn it on before running it. The first thing it did was try to change a tool. It put the tool in the carousel, then raised the head, with the tool still stuck in the carousel. One of those times you were glad you were just an employee and not the owner.
5) Feed Hold did not work when using the return to start point feature after stopping the program mid cycle and jogging the table around to inspect your work. I learned this while cutting a gear on the 4th axis, thankfully the tool just nipped the gear as it went to the start point. Feen Hold worked for everything else, WTF!!!!
6) You could start the cycle by just lightly brushing the green button with your shoulder. I watched it happen many times.
7) The control would lock up and you were left looking for Ctrl/Alt/Del, which didn't work. You had to cycle to power to recover.
8) SERVO LAGG!!!!! I had to program exact stops all the time to maintain acceptable accuracy. Or say you wanted to increase the feed rate on the countersink, but wanted to maintain the same depth. Easy, just increase the depth by .001" per IPM of feed increase. This was using G81. We were running production so cycle times were important, G82 was too slow so we just did the work around.
9) 15 second chip to chip tool changes if you needed to change speed ranges.
10) In manual mode if you press carousel forward and then realize you meant backward, pressing backward before it was done going forwards, you just renumbered your tool stations by 1, surprise! Hope you're paying attention when you run the program next.
I know there were more but it's been 17 years and I have tried to forget that horror story. As for parts being cheap, well you do get what you pay for. The local spindle rebuilder in Portland once commented to me that without Haas he wouldn't have a business. I asked about Fadal and he said they were the same, just not as many of them around. Reason being the quality of the build so those spindles just didn't last as long as the better builders.
The comment of when something goes wrong with your better Japanese machines you often scrap them because it costs so much for parts is just stupid. Yes, the parts cost more, but you will go through many fewer parts over the years so the total bill probably will be less. The plus side is those machines are soooo much faster, especially if accuracy is important. The draw bar springs in my Kitamura are $1800, but are still original after 20 years and have lost about 3-5% of their hold. If it was a Fadal that would be $1200 for parts, @ 2001 prices, and 20-30 hours of labor. Which do you think is cheaper?
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