Haas Mini Lathe questions

I have been contemplating buying a small cnc lathe for a while and am starting to get a little more serious about it. The new Haas CL1 chucker lathe would be about perfect but, I probably shouldn't spend that kind of money so, the Mini Lathe is where I'm looking. I will not ever need to turn anything that won't fit in a 5C collet. Mostly, my parts will be under .5" diameter. Most will be CP Grade 2 titanium and occasionally some zirconium.

I looked on the Haas website but, they have no documentation for the Mini Lathe. My first question is about bar length. With a spindle liner, how long of a bar can I hold without adding a bar feeder? That, of course brings up the question of where to get spindle liners. I feel like they could probably be made significantly cheaper than buying from Haas.

Next question is about programming at the control. At one time, I was familiar with basic code on a mill and am confident I will pick it back up again as I get into programming parts but, until that time, how useful is the Haas Visual Programming System (VPS)? Would I be able to do most basic programming with canned cycles and not pay an extra $2k for VPS?

I'm sure I have more questions but, that should get me started.

Thanks,

Bob

Bob, You're about 15 years late to the party!
Haas has discontinued the Minilathe, starting in 2004!

However, if you can get your hands on a used one, DO IT!!!
If you can get your hands on 2 of them, I am interested in the second one!

Now some specifics for your questions:

Bar length is 3'. With .5 or under I prolly wouldn't go any more than that but a 5/8 or larger you can get away with say 40-42".

Spindle liners are easy to make. Spindle bore is 1.17" dia, so just make up a bunch of 1.17 dia x 1" long pucks out of delrin.
Bore them to the bar size you need ( say .385 for a 3/8 bar ), make 6 pcs for each size.
Then use a 6" lengths of 1" PVC pipe as a spacer, make only 5 of them.
When setting up, just shove a puck - spacer - puck - spacer -etc etc into the spindle. Done!

Haas VIPS (or Quick code as it was back then) is a joke, just learn to program offline by hand and send it to the machine instead.

The ML will eat TI all day long, so no problem there.

I'm usually late to the party! There are a few out there for sale though. None local, of course. 3' bar is plenty for me so that's good to hear.

Thanks,

Bob

Hot Bob said:

There are a few out there for sale though.

Bob

Click to expand...

Show me where !