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Switching from Swiss to ST20Y??? Any gotchas I'm not seeing?

PriddyShiddy

Cast Iron
Joined
Mar 1, 2011
Location
anaheim, ca
I know it sounds a little bonkers, but looking for input and if there are any issues I might run into running our parts with the Haas control. I know the control on the mill side (pre-NextGen) but Switched all of our production mills over to Speedios.

I'm not a lathe guy. The only CNC lathes I've owned were to make our blank tool shanks (old Miyano BND without Y, then Hardinge Swiss I never got working right, now Citizen A20). We are just milling round bars into square blanks 2.5" long and parting off. That's it. Turn a 1/2" round bar into a 3/8" square shank 2.5" long with rounded corners running 3/8" end mill down one side, then the next etc. When I ran these on the Miyano I used a spring loaded live center and it worked great, but didn't have Y axis and had to use the tip of the end mill instead of the side, terrible on tooling.

Getting the ground O1 tool steel bars in time, in each size has become a nightmare. Haven't gotten 5/8" bars since February and the prices have tripled over the last 5 years. Since I have no choice now but to import my own (likely non-ground) bars I could save 50% and not have to send them for grinding just switching from a swiss to a chucker so I can work from oversized non-ground bars. Slower, but saves me 1/3 of the machine cost per year on metal.

On the ST20Y with barfeed it would just be part off, center drill, feed out 2.625", bring in the programable hydraulic tailstock with live center, run and end mill (2 passes per side) at C0,C90,C180,C270, then parts catcher call and part off. Simple... but doing ~1,000 cycles per day+ anything that hangs up the cycle 5 seconds looses a lot of parts. How fast are the parts catchers? other options for extracting the parts? We have a conveyor on the Citizen that feeds out to a 5 gallon bucket with a strainer.

The Citizen hands off to second spindle and doesn't need the tail stock, so obviously this process will be slower. I'm just wondering if there are any gotchas I'm not thinking of. I'm thinking I can add a probe and measure/offset automatically every 20 parts or so and should be able to run deeper into the night (can only run ~300 parts lights out currently). The bar feeder only being 6 feed means it wouldn't make it through the night, but can get a heck of a lot of parts done overnight. Tolerance is +//0.0008. As the end mill wears it causes deflection in the bar which compounds around the 4 sides so we see a few tenths change in part size over a few hundred parts on our smallest size (5/16" bar becoming 1/4" shank).

Appreciate the input. Looking to sell the Swiss for roughly 1/2 the cost of a new ST20Y dressed out or close to trade for a 2018ish at going rates. Thinking likely go used since it doesn't add cost. Haas would add some new capability for R&D on some other parts too. Frankly the Citizen is just too much of a PITA for me to program so I just don't run anything else on it.
 
Also, we run oil in the swiss and assume no issues running it in the Haas? Parts sit after machining for months to a year sometimes and the oil means we never have any rust issues, coolant maintenance etc. For these parts it's a win.
 
Stick with the Swiss. You can add a probe to it for checking size. Heck, depending on what options are on the crappy FANUC control, you may be able to use a gage block in your gang as a probe. I know the Mitsubishi controllers can do it, not sure on the old FANUC. The Swiss will be way faster than the Haas. The sub spindle allows you to deburr the back side.
Contact Whiz Cut USA and ask about a Magic Guide Bushing for your A20. It'll be way cheaper than switching machines, and allow you to use un ground stock, while retaining all the advantages of the Swiss (including using 12ft bars).
 
What about a Swiss that has “chucker “ mode? Remove the guide bushing and use unground stock?
If 5 seconds is important, you will be very unhappy leaving the Swiss machines IMO
 
What about a Swiss that has “chucker “ mode? Remove the guide bushing and use unground stock?
If 5 seconds is important, you will be very unhappy leaving the Swiss machines IMO

At 2.5" long, I don't think he'd be very happy with the results of milling the flats at the end of the bar farthest from the chuck face.
But I agree, the A20s are not very fast machines, as Swiss go... But they're lightning compared to a full size Haas.
 
If you got the polygon milling attachment for your machine, assuming your control has the option, you could probably polygon mill your flats faster than you can make them with an endmill. This depends on your flatness tolerance. Polygon milled flats are never quite truly flat, but they're close enough for most intents and purposes.

 
At 2.5" long, I don't think he'd be very happy with the results of milling the flats at the end of the bar farthest from the chuck face.
But I agree, the A20s are not very fast machines, as Swiss go... But they're lightning compared to a full size Haas.
Your not wrong. My thoughts where. If he is going to do it on a haas chucker. Ya going to be the same disadvantage as a Swiss in chucker mode. At least the a20 will be 5x as fast still?
 
Stick with the Swiss. You can add a probe to it for checking size. Heck, depending on what options are on the crappy FANUC control, you may be able to use a gage block in your gang as a probe. I know the Mitsubishi controllers can do it, not sure on the old FANUC. The Swiss will be way faster than the Haas. The sub spindle allows you to deburr the back side.
Contact Whiz Cut USA and ask about a Magic Guide Bushing for your A20. It'll be way cheaper than switching machines, and allow you to use un ground stock, while retaining all the advantages of the Swiss (including using 12ft bars).
Well hot damn. I didn't know that Magic Guide Bushing existed! We've spent hundreds of hours cutting off stuck bars that had a blemish we didn't catch that got stuck with burrs created by the bushing and Z1 collet fighting the bar.

I know the Haas will be 2x slower at least, but, if I can get the probe to keep parts within tolerance all night with the right macros that means I get a Y axis lathe I can run other parts during the day. The Swiss is just 'too much' for me to program and enjoy setting up to do things even if it had a hydralic chuck there's no way I'd want to swap parts/size mid day.

Right now we are ~3 months ahead only running the swiss 4 days a week. The Haas with macro and probe should be able to run over the weekend just swinging by and loading bars and I could use it during the weekdays to run job shop/R&D on new products and larger than 20mm stock. It's a huge win if I can get it to work.

Dealer just ran into a 2020 with the sub if it's not too much more than I can get for the swiss it adds abilities I currently lack.

What about a Swiss that has “chucker “ mode? Remove the guide bushing and use unground stock?
If 5 seconds is important, you will be very unhappy leaving the Swiss machines IMO
Prolly shouldn't have said that. Have to shift thinking. If it can run through the night 5 seconds isn't relevant. The swiss is faster than we need now and can't go bigger than 1/2 for our shanks since they start at 16mm (20mm lathe). If we can offer 3/4 and 1" the machine would pay for itself per year.

At 2.5" long, I don't think he'd be very happy with the results of milling the flats at the end of the bar farthest from the chuck face.
But I agree, the A20s are not very fast machines, as Swiss go... But they're lightning compared to a full size Haas.
It's actually easy. Just had to program in an arc from tip to tip and have the arc center as a macro. Measure tip, center, tip of the finished part. Type in the error to 3 macro #s and my program adjusts the arc radius to account for the 0.00027" bow in the center or whatever. The Swiss does more of a taper with the start of the bar always being larger since the bar vibrates more as it's gets more stick out. We don't grab with the sub. The parts just need to be on size then they tumble for 24 hours in aggressive media and have a perfect finish and are all within ~0.002" which is what we need after tumble.
 
i'd be very leary of a couple year old haas ST up for sale would want to know exactly why it still isn't sitting in original owners shop. seems to be a lot of newer STs and UMCs up for sale not sure i'd touch them with a 10' pole for what they want vs starting fresh with a new machine for not much more. proceed with caution....
 
NGL man I haven’t heard much good about Haas’s quality control since about 2018, definitely since 2020. Lathes in particular. I would definitely be wary.
 
Add the DT models to the list. We got one delivered recently and the problem list keeps getting longer. I think the DT we got skipped the quality control inspection.
 
The swiss will be about 3x faster than a normal turning center of that size for most things. Every single thing is faster on the Swiss, often by a lot - the bar feeding on our swiss (IEMCA Ideal 325) is a total of about 1 second, on our turning center (LNS quickload S2) it's more like 5-6 seconds. Tool changes are way faster, C-axis indexing is way faster, parts extraction is way faster (1 second vs 5-8) the only thing that might not be quicker is the feed on the milling where I would expect the Haas to be able to push a little harder - however maybe not, if you're currently using a guide bushing. Further to that, while I haven't owned a Haas lathe (only a Haas mill), I wouldn't be super confident that the thing is going to run around the clock reliably.
 
Why do you need to mill the square? This seems like it might be an ideal application for polygon turning. My understanding is that it's significantly faster than milling flats, and it eliminates the need for a Y-axis. With the swiss, you wouldn't need to hang the part out 2.5"+ from the guide bushing either.
 
Thanks for the input. I think we are going to gamble and have already sold the Swiss since we are so far ahead it's just sitting.

Ordering the ST20Y and barfeed next week for delivery around the end of the year. I know it will be MUCH slower. We aren't trying to increase the speed, but rather increase the capability in the down time. I have ~2 tons of excess blanks backed up and the Swiss was sitting doing nothing most of the time.

The Swiss was to much of a PITA for me to change over to other projects and 95% of the other projects are bigger than 20mm so it was no help anyways. I think we should be able to stay ahead and get to work on some new products that the swiss was not capable of.

Buying new so at least I have a warranty to work on/out the bugs.

Going to try turning an extra .5" length on each part and hold that with an extended nose C5 on the sub to stabilize instead of a spring loaded live center so that hopefully we can successfully pick off and then eject and catch the parts. Seems like the parts catching will be the biggest challenge with these light weight flat sided parts. Will take some trial and error I'm sure. I'm hopeful I can get the machine to be able to probe parts and adjust offsets and keep +/-0.001" through the night or at least until the parts catcher is full. It's low tolerance, light cuts, just need to adjust for part deflection as tools wear. Surface finish is irrelevant they just all need to be within ~0.002" of each other. We only need to run a few hundred parts a day. Even at 5x slower I should have 1/2 the month to make other parts/money.
 
Thanks for the input. I think we are going to gamble and have already sold the Swiss since we are so far ahead it's just sitting.

Ordering the ST20Y and barfeed next week for delivery around the end of the year. I know it will be MUCH slower. We aren't trying to increase the speed, but rather increase the capability in the down time. I have ~2 tons of excess blanks backed up and the Swiss was sitting doing nothing most of the time.

The Swiss was to much of a PITA for me to change over to other projects and 95% of the other projects are bigger than 20mm so it was no help anyways. I think we should be able to stay ahead and get to work on some new products that the swiss was not capable of.

Buying new so at least I have a warranty to work on/out the bugs.

Going to try turning an extra .5" length on each part and hold that with an extended nose C5 on the sub to stabilize instead of a spring loaded live center so that hopefully we can successfully pick off and then eject and catch the parts. Seems like the parts catching will be the biggest challenge with these light weight flat sided parts. Will take some trial and error I'm sure. I'm hopeful I can get the machine to be able to probe parts and adjust offsets and keep +/-0.001" through the night or at least until the parts catcher is full. It's low tolerance, light cuts, just need to adjust for part deflection as tools wear. Surface finish is irrelevant they just all need to be within ~0.002" of each other. We only need to run a few hundred parts a day. Even at 5x slower I should have 1/2 the month to make other parts/money.

Yeah the setup time on the swiss machines sucks, and they're about as versatile as a can opener. Our turning centre gets more parts done per year than our swiss machine for that reason - it's much faster/easier to set up and get running, and infinitely less frustrating, like it's actually rare to see an alarm on it whereas if the swiss didn't alarm that day, it's probably because it wasn't powered on. I think you'll be happy with your decision - I'm considering doing the same.
 
…and they're about as versatile as a can opener.
:ROFLMAO:

I was a bonehead and never looked at the bar feed specs till Monday. It is 4 foot not 6 foot so I have 450 wrong length bars on the way… no biggie….

…but it also say 0.375” minimum bar diameter. BIGGIE. HUGE PROBLEM since 80% of our production blanks come from 0.3125” bar. Emailed the apps guy I met last week with no reply yet. What’s the limitation???? Can I just make a smaller push rod and get a custom liner???
 
Well… serendipity? Fate? Something…

Y’all gave me a good bit of weariness on new Haas machines. I’ve been waiting 3 days to get an answer from Haas on WHY their bar loader says min. Bar diameter is .375”. Can I just get a custom liner and make a smaller push rod? Apparently it’s a difficult question to answer.

3 hours after the Swiss left my Yamazen dealer stopped by out of the blue. Had a Takisawa TS-3000YS sitting in the show room so we went and saw it. Then went to a shop running several of them. Sorry Haas. If they had answered the question Monday I’d have already ordered the ST20Y.

Not fair to compare the two directly. The Takisawa is closer to the Haas DS than the ST. More Like a DS20Y (if it were an option) since it has real sub spindle that can actually operate as tailstock by pulling a center off the turret, support the work, put it back, then do the handoff to full C work on back side. No warning of duty cycle on live tooling and full 10hp on live tooling. Box ways and 25% more Y travel than even the DS30Y. Price works out to only 10% more than ST20Y quote for a much larger and more capable machine with box ways and Yamazen support which has been AMAZING on my 6 Speedios. I had to replace a spindle at 22,000 hours after 5 years on one S700 and nothing else. I’ve had 10 service/repairs my Haas mills with a combined 10,000hrs between the two including 1 spindle and more than 5 belts, new ball screws and rails on one which was just a missed diagnosed issue by the tech. Guess I’ll get to learn Fanuc a lot better.

Thanks again for the input fellers
 








 
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