NGC Bugs

[smb44]

After having run a 2005 Haas Minimill for several years, and now having run a brand new VF-4SS with the NGC, I have noticed some things...

The NGC is laggy. Button presses take a significantly longer amount of time. Perhaps this sounds like a pathetic complaint, but if you've run a CNC for even a short period of time, you'll understand.

The machine will lock up entirely on occasion when trying to access a remote shared folder. Rebooting the machine is the only fix, as the control becomes unresponsive and returns a 'non-resettable' error.

Most recently, I encountered an issue during jogging. Simply put, the machine would only jog in the '+' direction. Every axis displayed this problem. I tried jog lock on each axis to verify it wasn't just the pulse encoder wheel, and the issue remained. However, it would move in the minus direction if commanded through a program or MDI..... Just not jog. This bug seemingly appeared suddenly when I was setting up a job. Rebooting the machine was the only way to solve this.

A week ago, the machine would not complete a power up and restart procedure. It wouldn't home the X or Y axis. No alarm was given. A reboot was required to get past this problem.

I've had the machine for 6 weeks, and the control has already displayed more bugs than the 2005 minimill on a coldfire I control that I ran for many years. In fact, I can't think of a single software related bug on that machine during my ownership of it.

I want to like it (the new Haas) , I really do, but things like this make me seriously question my purchase. The control, on paper (and previous generations) is/was the best. I have machines with Fanuc controls, and while I can use them, they just don't have the intuitiveness of the Haas controls. That said, they (non-Haas controls) also don't have weird and random bugs that make me question running programs on them. Even my plasma table, which runs Linux CNC, runs better.

/endrant.... I suppose. I just want others who are considering a new Haas machine to have this knowledge before purchasing. Are these problems show stoppers? Perhaps not, if *only* a reboot is required. But I'm not going to lie, I'm always wondering what bug will happen next in the middle of a problem and cause a serious crash.

 

[SeymourDumore]

Oh, I seriously doubt you are the only one furious with Haas for the NGC.
Yes, it has some nice additional features, but there is no acceptable explanation for all the bullshit bugs it introduced.
None!
The worst part: Haas WILL NEVER take responsibility for the problems, nor will they EVER fix them just because some schmuck complains about them.

I have lost tools and parts to the tune of a couple of grand in my unintentional endeavor of finding stupid shit, so far, the most I got was a shoulder shrug once, otherwise not even an acknowledgement of my bitching.

 

[Milland]

Have you tried video taping the errors when they occur (and are reproducible)? Send them to your HFO, then get the service manager to respond to them.

At some point, might be worth a lawyer to find out if you can return the machine.

 

[Orange Vise]

I believe what you're seeing is actually several different problems overlapping each other.

NGC definitely has its fair share of bugs, but lagginess is not one of them. That's just the way it is, unfortunately.

Frozen controls due to file system errors aren't uncommon on the new machines, IME. Aggravating for sure.

Not sure why your X/Y wouldn't home. Could be an issue with the Z-axis not homing correctly first. Unfortunately, homing issues are also not uncommon with this brand. I don't really understand why they haven't moved to absolute encoders to eliminate homing entirely.

We recently switched our machines from grease to oil lubrication as per their bulletin. We have three of their Y-axis lathes, which require check valves to be installed on the X and Y axes. The lube lines are clearly identified in their instructions. Unfortunately, the factory assemblers didn't bother following the instructions and seem to have connected the lines randomly to the manifold block. Only one of our lathes had the X/Y axes lube lines connected to the correct ports on the manifold. The other two did not, thus failing the F2 lube test.

 

[SeymourDumore]

I don't really understand why they haven't moved to absolute encoders to eliminate homing entirely.

For Christ's sake! Please don't give them any ideas!
The current horde of so called programmers employed by Haas couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag!

Once or twice a month the power up sequence shits the bed for gearbox failure. No reason, just missed the switch toggle... I guess.
The pre-release solenoid does a double take just before clamping, you gotta be a man on your feet to hold onto the damned tool just before it gets sucked into the spindle.
The RESET button doesn't actually reset the program pointer when you edit something, sometimes you have to get to MEM mode and hit RESET again just to rewind to the top.
The UI programming sucks major you know what. It is based on a strict, rigid structure which does not in any way resemble any sort of logic.

I can go on and elaborate more, but if you know the control, you know how it used to work and you know how other controls work, you pretty much know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[smb44]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I had heard complaining about the NGC before, but nothing specific (outside of that peck drilling bug)

Turns out the reason there isn't anything specific is because these weird bugs seem to lack any sort of consistency amongst any machines. Its almost as if everyone gets a custom tailored experience with NGC issues....

To add to my own running list is the servo tuning... My HRC210 rotary would scream like a banshee at times. Had the HFO tech come out and flash an update which fixed it, but now the y and z axis servos will get loud at times. I've gotten the "it's not a problem" response regarding it, and while that may be true, it's also annoying as hell to hear in the shop. My other machines and their servos are always nearly silent, no matter their position.

Some other change I noticed was the inability to cycle the positions subwindow when on the program screen. On the pre ngc control, you could use the arrows to cycle between machine, work, operator, or distance to go offsets for that subwindow while being in the program page. On the NGC, it seems to sometimes use the last position screen you utilized under the full positions window..... But only sometimes. Perhaps I'm missing something though, so if someone could chime in regarding this I'd be grateful.

Still, I don't want it to sound like the machine is entirely unusable, but it's a far cry from what the Haas control used to be. I guess I expected more based upon my experience with my 2005 Mini Mill, which in all honesty, was a pretty solid little machine for it's size and price.

 

[Mr. Atoz]

Crap. We just ordered a UMC. I hope we too don't have a shitty experience.

 

[thesidetalker]

How old is "brand new"?

You should ask your HFO for a software update. It will probably fix some of those issues you're having. (and possibly give you more to find later on )

...

Most recently, I encountered an issue during jogging. Simply put, the machine would only jog in the '+' direction. Every axis displayed this problem. I tried jog lock on each axis to verify it wasn't just the pulse encoder wheel, and the issue remained. However, it would move in the minus direction if commanded through a program or MDI..... Just not jog. This bug seemingly appeared suddenly when I was setting up a job. Rebooting the machine was the only way to solve this.
...

I had this problem with one of my machines and it was due to the way the probe was shut off in the middle of a measuring cycle. If you feedhold/reset or some combination of that in the middle of cycle or somesuch. I think we were able to fix it by running another cycle and either resetting again or letting it complete... Something like that.

Software on that machine has been updated a while back and we haven't seen that issue anymore. And it was only that one out of 9 machines.

The amount of bugs really is a pain in the ass. On one hand it is nice they try to add new features to make life easier and simplify rotaries, robots, etc, but while they do that they add a hive full of bugs at the same time. Every one bug they fix, they add 3 more. I'd bet money they probably don't have one version which runs mostly bug-free. Every version they're fixing bugs, but adding new shit and new bugs at the same time. It would be nice if they could release a "stable" version every so often

 

[Speedie]

Contact your HFO.. lol

 

[chineshop_guy]

we have new UMC since October of last year. haven't had any control issues. actually like the NGC.
had a issue with manufacturing defect in the conveyor. was taken care in timely fashion.
we deal with HFO midwest and have a great service tech in our area.

 

[Ryan at Sparrow]

NGC is pretty buggy, definitely laggy. I've given up with the jog wheel unless I am actually jogging the table. If I am navigating the control I use the cursor keys because it responds better, I feel bad because I sound like a madman with all the beeps but its really the most efficient way to navigate and edit on those controls.

I have one machine that will jog 2 axis at once during pause jog continue, scary as all get out. Luckily I wasn't deep in a part.

All of my machines with the NGC would crash the probe HARD if you used T200 as the probe. If you used any tool number 200 or higher (meaning tool groups which are 1000+) and tried to set the length without executing a tool change it would crash into the tool setter. That should be fixed now as far as I'm aware but we were down for weeks with a tech in trying to figure out what was going on.

Pallet recovery on the EC400 has been sketchy. It will ask if there is a pallet on the robot but it won't raise or lower itself when it should. It crashed itself into a pallet station. So if I ever have to do a recovery on the pallet pool I do it at 5% and watch every angle.

The tool groups have acted differently on every version I use. One will crash tools if trying to measure or detect breakage (stated above), there was a version that would let you set a feed time limit over 99 minutes 99 seconds (fixed now), and maybe I'm just a goofball but the action on what to do after a tool is expired doesn't work properly. Might be because I only have 2 tools of a type, but it won't use the older tool even if you tell it to.

No one believes me but I swear one version of the NGC on my vertical would not let me reference G53 in MDI. In a normal program it would but not in MDI.

Sometimes the control just won't save your edits. Always make sure to run graphics and double check that the change was taken.

The setting that saves the location to where you are DPRNTing to used to not save on poweroff. So you would have to retype the entire path of the network folder on each power cycle. No bueno.

Probably the BIGGEST issue besides the probe crashing was that we used to be able to background edit programs while the machines were running. Now we can't, otherwise it deletes the program from the list and you have to restart the machine in order to see it again. We used to be able to run a main pallet program, edit one of the part programs while the machine is running and once the machine gets to that program it will run the edited program. It was SO nice! Not sure how they ruined it or if they plan on bringing it back but it worked like a charm and I will always miss being able to do that.

I've learned to just work around the bugs at this point with the exception of needing to be able to probe and use DPRNT for data collection. Still love the machines but they give me some heartache.

 

[rjwalker1973]

There are a few features I like with the NGC, but I prefer the classic and legacy controllers by far. We are actually looking to DN Solutions for our next machine just because of Haas support and the issues we have faced with the newer machines

 

[jm0502]

There are a few features I like with the NGC, but I prefer the classic and legacy controllers by far. We are actually looking to DN Solutions for our next machine just because of Haas support and the issues we have faced with the newer machines

I didnt care for their mill Visually, but have been happy with the Lynx 2600 SY we bought. will look closer when we buy our next machine.

 

[Speedie]

Another one is that if you load programs from usb and reload the program it it will display the copy but even if you delete it the copy is still displayed until you restart

 

[OVER THE POND STEVE]

We have found a problem with the High Speed Machining function, we have it on all of our machines and it works pretty much as you would expect, but on our one machine with NGC (UMC 750), it just doesn't seem to work at all, any one else had this problem?

 

[Tree Catcher]

The VF3 used to give us problems when drilling. If I went over 25 pecks, the drill would feed down at f.001 or something slow like that. Last time we had the tech over, I mentioned it to him and he updated the software. Sure pissed me off when I was in a hurry to get a part done and had to switch the program from the 50 taper vf
3 to the 40 taper vf2.

 

[SeymourDumore]

Ok, new one as-of 5 minutes ago...
Machine is working just fine, running a program.
Operator wants to change the screen to something, and accidentally hit the AUX coolant button.
Immediately realized it, and a split second later hit the AUX again to turn it off.
Low and behold, after the 2nd AUX button push, the spindle STOPS but the feed continues.
Anyone cares to guess what happened to the 1/2" XL endmill?

 

[Mebfab]

Anyone cares to guess what happened to the 1/2" XL endmill?

Well, I hope its like the broom from the disney cartoon.

 

[rjwalker1973]

Ok, new one as-of 5 minutes ago...
Machine is working just fine, running a program.
Operator wants to change the screen to something, and accidentally hit the AUX coolant button.
Immediately realized it, and a split second later hit the AUX again to turn it off.
Low and behold, after the 2nd AUX button push, the spindle STOPS but the feed continues.
Anyone cares to guess what happened to the 1/2" XL endmill?

Dearly Beloved........

 

[rjwalker1973]

Ok I will post a positive for one about the NGC. I like how easy it is to back up the machine via USB drive. We don't have DNC software so I back them up manually every week. See an actual positive. Now on another note my boss asked me about a millturn and adding one to our shop, which I am all for. I told him Haas didn't make a millturn. He asked "do you think they ever will"? I said "lord I hope not."