30 five star ratings on Google (just saying)
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.
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.
