New to me 2001 Haas TM1

[gunsmither]

Nice and tidy. Good job!

 

[slodat]

Slodat, That looks fantastic. Great Job.

Thank you!

Nice and tidy. Good job!

I owe you a beer for catching the tool changer issue prior to me crashing the machine. Thank you!!

 

[gunsmither]

Glad to help a Brother machinist! Have you fired that beauty up yet?

 

[slodat]

I’m finally sorting out running my parts on the Haas I bought last December. The control is quite different and I don’t find it to be intuitive at all. And, I’m making some headway.

Step one, I thought, was getting my milling stop setup to work on the Orange vise with the 8” serrajaws. I made two 1” spacers so the arms would make it past the wider jaws.

The spacers worked great. It was really cool to just grab some material from the rack and turn these right quick on the Pacemaker. Once I had it all bolted together another issue presented itself- the Orange vise jaws are deeper than the typical Kurt jaws the stop is made to work with. So.. I’ll have to sort that out at some point. I think I’ll buy or make another table mount. I use Edge Technologies table mount on the other mill.





I spent a big part of the day getting the code to the machine and fumbling my way around the control. I did get to this:



I got the graph function figured out and that really helps. Lastly, I’ve loaded up the tools for the first job:



How it sits now while I try to wrap my head around measuring tools and setting WCS for OP1.

 

[ArmyDoc]

Wow. Have been looking at old Haas units.... Didn't realize it would be this hard to get to work. Thanks for updating us, and please keep doing the updates!

 

[slodat]

Discovered I needed to change one setting.. And... we're off!



This is a two flute 3/4" insert end mill that uses APTK inserts. I don't have a proven recipe for it yet, so it took really little cuts.. and a very long time. I'm trying to decide if I get another Shear Hog just for the Haas.. or if I hold off and let it borrow tools. I feel like I want to have both mills tooled up with my core tools I use for making my products. Having both mills running at once sounds really nice!

That tool did a nice job on the facing pass:


Now that I'm working with a tool changer, I can order operations to do things like the facing pass last, even though it means another tool change. This will eliminate the scratches seen around the pre-drill hole in this photo:


Before I get into a nice/fancy/time consuming chip enclosure, I'm going to do a quick and dirty with MDF tomorrow and see how it works.



In all its messy, 2001 glory:


If I had set my Y axis WCS correctly, this would have been a perfectly acceptable OP1:


Okay.. I not only no longer hate the Haas control, I think this 21-year-old machine is going to quell my window shopping for a new VMC for a while. I am so excited to get a little bit of chip containment sorted out and see how it runs my parts this week.

 

[slodat]

Wow. Have been looking at old Haas units.... Didn't realize it would be this hard to get to work. Thanks for updating us, and please keep doing the updates!

Like I said in my most recent post, I think the old Haas is going to be a great machine. The Calmotion unit is a must have in my opinion. I'm happy with it for what it is. I want a newer machine for the probing mostly.

 

[akjeff]

Excellent! Glad you got it working. With the older style Haas control( the ones with the analog spindle load meter ), is there a conversational function, or is it strictly use it like a manual mill and/or full cnc?

 

[slodat]

Excellent! Glad you got it working. With the older style Haas control( the ones with the analog spindle load meter ), is there a conversational function, or is it strictly use it like a manual mill and/or full cnc?

I honestly don't know. I suspect it may have some sort of conversational. It's not of interest to me. I find conversational programming to be onerous compared to CAD/CAM.

 

[slodat]

I also got a chip bin/enclosure put together for the Haas. I used a bunch of the test bend coupons from the press brake as L brackets to bolt everything together. They worked great. I’m sure folks will shake their head at the choice to use MDF. It has worked great on the Tree. There’s not much in the way of moisture with the Fogbuster. And, this serves as a prototype.. that may not get replaced. We shall see how it works. A crash into mdf shouldn’t cause any real damage. This will be a huge improvement.





I need to move both vises toward the center about 1.5”. And cut a hole for the milling stop.