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Haas grease lube problem

Spruewell

Hot Rolled
Joined
Sep 8, 2015
Location
Northern California
Shutting down on Christmas Eve to find the grease canister on 2016 VF3 gave up...
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No warning. No alarm.

Anyone else experience this phenomenon? The canister and manifold are both destroyed. It appears to be the same canister and manifold used for the coolant screen.
 
Not too impressed with the design of the canister and manifold. The threads don't seem to fit well. And the idea of spinning it on until the tape marks line up, rather than spinning up tight to a gasket like every other manufacturer of these types of units does seems prone to problems.
 
They no longer use the red grease, and my new lathes come with oil filter looking cans instead of the plastic. It must have been a known issue, that they phased out. Would be worth asking the service dept if you can switch to the new style grease and cans.
 
The new purple liquid grease is also causing machines to clog. I personally know of one that is only a year old, got clogged. Haas grease is just no good, period. Switch to syngear sh1150 as recommended by haas for subsititute. It is a gear oil.

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I contacted my HFO and told them about the issues I was having with the plastic canister. He told me they had just come out with an update for that which uses a metal canister. The downside is that you can’t see the level of lubricant in it unless you take it off to look inside. Didn’t seem to be much of an issue to me. He was unaware of an issue with the plastic ones failing. I ordered a new canister and manifold. They sent me the plastic thing again. I’m hoping the failure was a fluke. I cleaned out the mess, installed the new unit and am crossing my fingers it doesn’t explode all over the inside of my cabinet again.
 
If you haven't done it yet, I would pull back the way covers and inspect your linears/trucks/and ballscrews to make sure they were getting lubed properly. Dealing with this fiasco on my VF3SSYT right now.

Also weird that your grease canister is a frosted white. Mine is the same system, yet the container is crystal clear

hassBS.jpg
 
Switching to sh1150 on red grease machines also requires switching to different restrictors on the trucks and ballnuts and IIRC you need the check valve system as well from the purple grease system. The restrictors are different sizes between the red grease machines, and the thinner purple grease ones. using the Sh1150 without the smaller restrictors can cause lube issues to the Z as the oil flows much easier and won't build enough pressure over the duration to flow up the Z properly and reach the manifold. The check valves also prevent the fluid from draining back out of the lines from gravity.

It's a royal pain in the arse. Dealing with this nonsense on a machine here right now myself.
 
I unfortunately don’t have the time to go through and update the system right now. I’m not excited about it. Got it all back together the other day and now need to go through the purge procedure to get all the air out of the system and check for blockage.

Btw, how much time do you expect to have into doing the changeover? About how much did the components cost?
 
I contacted my HFO and told them about the issues I was having with the plastic canister. He told me they had just come out with an update for that which uses a metal canister. The downside is that you can’t see the level of lubricant in it unless you take it off to look inside. Didn’t seem to be much of an issue to me. He was unaware of an issue with the plastic ones failing. I ordered a new canister and manifold. They sent me the plastic thing again. I’m hoping the failure was a fluke. I cleaned out the mess, installed the new unit and am crossing my fingers it doesn’t explode all over the inside of my cabinet again.

You can't see how much is left, but if you go into diagnostics and do a grease cycle, the graphics on screen showing the lube system will light up green if a succesful 'shot' was delivered, otherwise it will turn red. ALso, the purple grease is no longer new, it is a tan/brown grease now, at least on 2020 machines.
 
crap... looks like the system is all plugged up. So, now I can either fight this thing for the next day or two, or call to have a service tech spend a day on it. The suggested upgrade is for the purple or liquid grease system. Sounds like that stuff can plug up too. Not a lot of good options out there.
 
There grease systems are just a bad design IMO. unless you're constantly checking and inspecting under the covers you never know if the machine is getting lube or if it's eating itself alive until you definitely know and at that point it's major downtime and expense for repairs. It is not a well thought out design.

I would much rather have a proper oil system and have to have a tank skimmer and deal with tramp oils than dealing with the grease not getting to where it's needed and chewing an otherwise perfectly good machine to death.. It's a royal PITA to repair.

I caught mine relatively in time, and ended up making fittings that hook directly to the copper line compression fittings and allow me to hook up a grease gun filled with the red grease so I could blow out the clogs and lines. Requires pulling the way covers, crawling in the machine, and getting all sorts of messy, but doable. I did not convert the machine to the HLG as it has just as many issues as the red grease. When the machine requires new trucks and rails, I will gut the grease system out and install a proper oil system most likely.
 
I started disconnecting lines at the trucks and ran the lube test cycle. A little grease did come out of the lines. Talking to a tech, I found out that you can change the lube cycle timer to pump at shorter intervals. It occurred to me that considering the small amount of grease that came out during the test that the system may not be totally plugged, it’s just hard to see it coming out. I’m going to try shortening the lube cycle time and checking periodically to see if I can see signs of grease at the trucks. Going to get into the habit of running regular lube test cycles once a week for a while to try and accelerate the process.
I had to change out the X axis servo communication cable while I was in there, so not a total waste of a day. I’ve had it sitting on the shelf for about 6 months waiting for a good opportunity to tear into that project. Fortunately it hasn’t glitched during a tapping cycle
 








 
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