Category Archives: Haas Mill

Haas VF3

Category : Haas Haas Mill

This week I got to train two people on a Haas VF3, and what a delight it was. This machine was old I mean 1996 but still a great functional machine tool.

I like to see myself in a similar way, really old but still functioning, well at least as I write.

Haas VF3

It took me back to when I first set up my business of training people on CNC machines. My first two victims were at Armitage Shanks in good old Wolverhampton.

1996 was the year I started out on my own CNC Training and these were the first machines I trained on. I did so many I got pissed off with the sound of my own voice (which I rarely do).
Because all the machines were the same I was saying the same things and quoting the same tired old anecdotes day after day.
Fortunately, I went on to train on all the well-known CNC machines like Mazak, Mori Seiki, Matsuura, Bridgeport to name a few. Quite a lot of the not so well-known ones like Maho, seen below.

Haas VF3

The machine above has a Phillips control and they were the absolute dogs’ bollocks. It even had rigid tapping. You could hit feed-hold while it was tapping and you got the option to reverse the tap out! Training people on these was an absolute delight.

Don’t forget we’re talking mid 80s here.

Shut up David this sounds like a big plug for the CNC Training Centre, or maybe it is.

CNC Training Centre (Home of the CNC Program)

There is pub by us and on the sign, it says “The Home of the Roast”.

You have to queue up to get your food and a young lad carves the meat in front of you. If he don’t like the look of you, which obviously with me he didn’t, you get two or three slices of turkey, so wafer thin, you can see the pattern on the fuckin plate underneath.

Now I don’t want to knock the people of Nuneaton, being as most of my family live there, but honestly there are some greedy bastards about.

After you get your meat and a few accoutrements you follow a long line of people adding cabbage and peas and all sorts of vegetables and potatoes to their plates. This bloke in front of me was scooping so much on to his plate it was flowing over. It was like a fuckin bowler hat as my late father would say, sans expletive.

In those days you didn’t swear in front of ladies, unless of course it was their turn.

I was just thinking “did you like not eat for a fuckin week?” You can imagine his kids at school saying to the teacher “oh, we’re not eating at our house this week miss”. The teacher then asks if this is some precursor to a religious festival or some such thing.

“Oh no miss, we’re booked in at the carvery for Sunday lunch” she gives them a knowing nod.

Anyway, I looked at this blokes plate with utter middle class disgust and vowed never to go there again.

My mate was about three people in front of this bloke and to my amazement my mate’s plate was so full of food, it made his look like he’d paid for the children’s menu.

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Haas Super Mini Mill

Category : Haas Haas Mill News

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I’ve wanted to get my hands on a new Haas machine for a while. Really wanted to see what the new control was like.

Haas Mini Mill

Stiltz provided the machine and the victims for the training.

If you have read any of my articles you will know I have always had an affection for Haas machines. The first one I ever worked on being about 1994. At that time they were nothing short of ground breaking innovation.

Things like a built in airline and coolant wash-hose were not only innovative but really useful.

Coolant Hose (What Will You Do With This)

A machine that worked straight out of the box. Easy peasy tool-change. Handwheel to scroll through the program, people still get impressed by this today.

Programmable coolant nozzles, fuckin hell that was a game changer. Just move nozzle to a position and press an F key and it’s stored with the offset.

Macro at no extra cost (wow) some people wanted two grand for this (cost of a good family car in 1995)

Program restart still the best in the world, don’t get me started.

The New Machine David How Was It?

To start with on this one I didn’t like the interface but it does grow on you. You need to get used to using the touch screen. Access to some menus is a bit convoluted too.

This Haas Mini Mill has a 10k spindle and 30 tools.

Something I suddenly remembered about this model. Well you know when you get a cup of coffee and it’s in a tall tapered glass mug? You are thinking “nice big cup of coffee”. You take four big swigs n it’s gone, shit what happened. What happened is an optical illusion because the cup is tapered it’s actual capacity is that of a thimble.

It happens all the time everything comes in a great big box with loads of packaging and the actual item is minute.

Anyway try moving this machine to the end of it’s stroke in X. Fuckin hell what a disappointment I recon you can only move around about half the table. I mean great you can put a pretty big part on here. That’s great so long as you don’t want to machine it!!!

It definitely is not what you expect from the company that’s known for pragmatism. Anyway that does piss me off.

The way this machine is being used is running programs from a memory stick. At first I thought it was a bit crazy as the programs weren’t particularly big.

Anyway surprise surprise it works well. Just plug in and press load and it runs. But what about editing you ask. No problem you just do it. Same as normal.

Program restart, no problem works exactly the same as when running from memory.

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Modal and non modal G codes

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Modal and non modal G codes

Modal and non modal G codes

Let Me explain

We all know that programming can be complicated. So let me explain to you how it all works. This article explains the real meaning of Modal and non modal G codes.

Modal means that once a command is issued it stays in the control.

How Can you Actually Use This?

If you issue a G0 or G00 command the machine is in rapid and you do not need to re-state it.

Rapid means all motors are flat out, like a teenager in a Ferrari.

Every move from then on will be a rapid move unless you tell it otherwise. The G code that changes it must be in the same group. For example G0 G1 G2 and G3 are all in the same group a bit like The Beatles used to be.

The other day I was talking to  a “young person” who hadn’t even heard of the Beatles. I mean fuckin hell, am I really really old or are they doomed to be forgotten?

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G10 Using G10 on a Fanuc Type Control

G10

I am always amazed that so many companies still don’t use G10 in their CNC programs. If you know you know.

I must admit I fuckin hate a lot of the things that young people say like “can I get a Latte”. (Get behind this fuckin counter and make it yoursef if you want to “get it”).

Anyway I kind of like “If you know you know”

No G10… Is this you?

I am sure you have your reasons which I will accept. But if your reason is that you don’t understand it then that’s just not good enough.

So you make a part, it’s all setup and you need to break it down.

If you can fix the work holding in such a way that you can reload it in exactly the same place then you need G10.

Let me explain, watch this video to see how single point location works.

G10 No need to spend loads of money.

You could just bolt a sub plate to your machine table so that vices and chucks etc can have dowels to locate them.

But the main idea is that you can relocate your work holding in exactly the same place every time.

G10
Using G10 on a Fanuc Type Control

This is your work offset page on a Fanuc control.

G10

These figures are written in by hand or by automatic setting.

If you had written this line in your program.

G90 G10 L2 P1 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-443.00

They would have been written in automatically when you ran the program.

So the work offset page could have any values in G54 but as soon as you run your program this G10 command will replace them with its preset values.

Make Sure Your in Absolute

Try not to forget the G90 (Absolute) because you may accidentally be in G91 (Incremental). What would then happen is it would add these numbers to what is already in the work offset. Oh dear me.

In G90 it will always replace them.

You can write to G54 G55 G56 G57 G58 or G59 just by changing the P number.

G90 G10 L2 P1 X-140.600 Y-265.923 Z-400.00 (G54)

G90 G10 L2 P2 X-125.500 Y-236.865 Z-313.865 (G55)

G90 G10 L2 P3 X-800.500 Y-563.200 Z-125.00 (G56)

G90 G10 L2 P4 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-169.369 (G57)

G90 G10 L2 P5 X-440.500 Y-265.200 Z-123.568 (G58)

G90 G10 L2 P6 X-410.500 Y-235.200 Z-443.00 (G59)

The code above would setup all six work offsets.

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Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

This article is about CNC Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

(G Code CNC Programming)

It’s not a competition G99 vs G98. sometimes you need G98 sometimes you need G99.

CNC Canned Cycles Using G98 G99, a canned cycle is usually one line of code for example to drill a hole. This one line of code tells the machine all it needs to know about drilling my holes.

G98 G99

  •  Depth
  •  Feedrate.
  •  Point to rapid to before drilling
  •  Point to rapid back to after drilling

Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

G Code Programming Haas Fanuc (ISO) Mazak

What happens then is each time we give the machine a new position it will drill one of these holes. Each hole will be identical unless we change one of the parameters. So if on one hole we put a different Z depth that hole and all subsequent holes will be to the new depth.

CNC Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

So all in all it’s a really easy way to drill holes. You tell it what you want and then each time you give a position you get a hole. Then when you get sick of drilling holes you type in G80.

Machine says OK he don’t want anymore holes so from now on when the machine moves to a position nothing happens.

Mitsubishi Carbide

There are loads of Canned Cycles I can’t be bothered to tell you about them all cos I’m going out tonight otherwise I would explain them. Anyway they all do different stuff like.

  • G84 Tapping
  • G73 High speed Peck Drilling
  • G83 Deep hole Drilling
  • G81 Drilling

They all work in the same way as each other but with variations.

Now the video at the bottom of the page is about CNC Canned Cycles Using G98 G99 and that’s in all the drilling and tapping type cycles.

Ok what does it do? You may well ask, G99 vs G98

I know for a fact that some of you, and I won’t mention names, put this on the line with the canned cycle but you ain’t got a clue what it does. Maybe you don’t even put it in. Maybe you don’t care.
Anyway it’s simple.

  1. You rapid to an initial point
  2. You rapid down close to the hole (this is the R point)
  3. You feed down to depth (Z Depth)
  4. Then you rapid out to either the initial point (1) or the R point (2)

Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

Now if you program G99 it returns to the R point .
If you program G98 it returns to the initial point (that means the first one)

Ok why on earth would I want that?

Well……. if you made the first point say 50mm above the job (About 2 inches) and the rapid point was 1mm above the job (.040”).
You could drill all your holes in G99 and the drill would each time return to 1mm (.040″) above the part. You get to a clamp and you put G98 and it jumps to 50mm (2”) above the part and misses the clamp. Change back to G99 and it stays down returning to 1mm (0.040) above the part.

Get it? So you eliminate wasted moves. Good init.

Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

CNC Canned Cycles Using G98 G99

Take a look at the CNC Training Courses on offer at the CNC Training Centre

Oh and here is my video it explains how to use G98 and G99 to jump over clamps on a fixture.

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