I have a Haas ST15Y. I've had it for just under 3 years now, but it has less than 1000 hours. We've diagnosed that the processor board is sending bad signals on the X channel, causing some servo alarms and the machine to be inoperable. The HFO tech agrees with our assessment based on our diagnostics. The new board is $6250! That's with a core exchange. It's $12,000 otherwise. That tells me that they likely recycle stuff back in. They require an HFO tech to install it. $375 for the first hour. $175/hour thereafter. With labor ($175 an hour for them to drive a few hours to us as well), I'll be into this for $8000 to $9000 on a machine with less than 1000 hours. We manufacture things here, so I understand that sometimes things just break. What I don't understand is the business practice of capitalizing on your machine's failure to extract what seems like unreasonable sums of money from a customer.
I'm told that X signals can't just be routed to an open motor channel on the drive. I feel like it "could" happen, but I can't really say. Knowing what I know about controls, I'm about 95% sure someone at Haas could make this happen and save me the money.
We run multiple mills, this lathe, laser, waterjet, etc. This is our only Haas, but it stands out as a problem child...
The C axis had a problem a couple weeks into it arriving. They fixed it. Weeks later it failed to disengage and ripped the drive gear, all the while being down for 3 week intervals. The machine has to be restarted frequently to get the C axis to engage, even still. The spindle draw tube had some seal fail and the hydraulic oil was contaminated with coolant. The coolant sump is cast into the base. It gets flooded with chips. It will literally fill up ENTIRELY with chips if you don't clean it out. There was no filter for the coolant pump, so we constantly had to take tools off and pull coolant lines to clear it out as every other day it would get blocked with chips. They finally sent me a basket filter for it. I had a $350 encoder cable fail last year. Now this $8000 to $9000 problem. Some small shops that are hanging by a thread wouldn't be able to cover this. Luckily I have it, but I'm disgusted to pay it.
In short, I'll never buy another Haas.
I have a Haas ST15Y. I've had it for just under 3 years now, but it has less than 1000 hours. We've diagnosed that the processor board is sending bad signals on the X channel, causing some servo alarms and the machine to be inoperable. The HFO tech agrees with our assessment based on our diagnostics. The new board is $6250! That's with a core exchange. It's $12,000 otherwise. That tells me that they likely recycle stuff back in. They require an HFO tech to install it. $375 for the first hour. $175/hour thereafter. With labor ($175 an hour for them to drive a few hours to us as well), I'll be into this for $8000 to $9000 on a machine with less than 1000 hours. We manufacture things here, so I understand that sometimes things just break. What I don't understand is the business practice of capitalizing on your machine's failure to extract what seems like unreasonable sums of money from a customer.
I'm told that X signals can't just be routed to an open motor channel on the drive. I feel like it "could" happen, but I can't really say. Knowing what I know about controls, I'm about 95% sure someone at Haas could make this happen and save me the money.
We run multiple mills, this lathe, laser, waterjet, etc. This is our only Haas, but it stands out as a problem child...
The C axis had a problem a couple weeks into it arriving. They fixed it. Weeks later it failed to disengage and ripped the drive gear, all the while being down for 3 week intervals. The machine has to be restarted frequently to get the C axis to engage, even still. The spindle draw tube had some seal fail and the hydraulic oil was contaminated with coolant. The coolant sump is cast into the base. It gets flooded with chips. It will literally fill up ENTIRELY with chips if you don't clean it out. There was no filter for the coolant pump, so we constantly had to take tools off and pull coolant lines to clear it out as every other day it would get blocked with chips. They finally sent me a basket filter for it. I had a $350 encoder cable fail last year. Now this $8000 to $9000 problem. Some small shops that are hanging by a thread wouldn't be able to cover this. Luckily I have it, but I'm disgusted to pay it.
In short, I'll never buy another Haas.
I had a similar problem this year with my HAAS VF-3YT Mill. The Y-axis had an alarm for the servo amplifier. Attempted to trouble shoot myself as always and found out that the amplifier needed to be repaired as the light was not green. Sent it out to a third party for repairs, after just short of 2 months of them trying to repair and figure out why its not working we came to the conclusion that only HAAS can repair or replace the part for the alarm to dissapear. After a long strugle and down time, paid for a new amplifier from HAAS and got it running again.