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The first and last Haas I'll ever buy

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.
 
If you have a pre 2008 Haas cnc and your main board goes out then you're SOL. They don't stock replacements and will try to talk you into what's, essentially, a full control retrofit for about 20K.
 
If you have a pre 2008 Haas cnc and your main board goes out then you're SOL. They don't stock replacements and will try to talk you into what's, essentially, a full control retrofit for about 20K.
When they started that stuff, I started looking at options. Sold all my Haas stuff. I too had problems with Haas machines I bought new, during and after warranty. The best Haas machines I had were built in 1998, a VF-2 and an HL-2. Stuff never ever breaks at a good time, and I was starting to have minor issues come up with those. I'd had a couple of visits from BrotherFrank, and he quoted me for a demo R450. After my experience with that machine, I started marketing my Haas stuff. Brothers pretty much just don't need service calls, same with Takisawa lathes. Just ordered a Y axis Takisawa. If it's as reliable as the 2-axis stuff, I'll be in heaven.
OP, sorry you had to go through that. It's so very frustrating. To me, it's worth paying more just to not have the stress and dealing with a broken machine's effect on work flow.
 
By "irrelevant" I mean irrelevant for manufacturers or people who want to create a prosperous business.

The headwinds any business owner faces in moving there (can't really imagine that) are:

1. An income tax of up to 12.3% which is also applied to all capital gains (highest in the country)

2. Sales tax of 7.25% (also highest in the country)
.
I wish our sales tax was 7.25%- try 10.75%!!
 
Unfortunately that's not a terribly unique experience (especially on this forum)

Shop I used to work at had a UMC 500, purchased new. Before they could run any kind of production on it, the Haas tech was there 6-7 times if I remember correctly
Was it a show room mill?
 
it was a while ago, so i dont remember all the details, but i dont think it was
I know someone who has/had the same situation happen. TSC didnt work, issue with tool changer, wouldnt go to 15k rpm (sold as having that spindle). This was a show room model so not sure if this is relevant. I know he didnt start paying for it until they fixed everything.
 
I used to work with a ST20Y, I had problems with the tailstock since the begining. It started to sound really bad. They change the motor that moves the tailstock and for few days the sound was gone. The sound it's still there. And now we have an alarm almost everytime we turn on the machine, the alarm is due to the home sensor for the tailstock.
 
I want to like Haas as an American manufacturer with a user friendly interface. And would consider buying used vertical mills at bargain basement prices. The same is not true for their lathes, horizontals, rotaries or anything else they sell.

Haas has their place for certain types of work but should mostly be avoided. When optioned out you can alway buy a more reliable and productive machine for the same amount of currency. You’ll be glad you did.
 
The other lathe has had five spindles in four years. They finally went outside of Haas for a spindle just to get the machine running.
Four spindles?! I get that mill spindles need rebuilding now and then but rarely hear of lathe spindles really needing anything unless the machine has a big crash, was there a specific recurring issue with them?

I love my little Haas OL-1 and I am keeping an eye out for a used Mini Mill at the right (cheap) price but I probably won't buy another, long term parts support is important to me and Haas just doesn't have that, the build quality and documentation is also sub par compared to my little Emco lathe. I guess if you are a shop that replaces machines on say a 10 year cycle then the parts support just isn't a consideration, the high resale value will offset the fact that someone else down the line, infact I reckon a lot of the reason Haas does well is that resale value, I've seen plenty of cases where people have bought a Haas machine almost on a whim because they know they'll lose so little value.
 
Four spindles?! I get that mill spindles need rebuilding now and then but rarely hear of lathe spindles really needing anything unless the machine has a big crash, was there a specific recurring issue with them?
The machine runs with a magazine bar loader for 12 hours a day. The spindles have expired on an almost yearly basis. The local Haas rep has no idea why. It's not been walloped in the 2 years I had been there.
They just repaired it and unloaded at near scrap price to make room for another Doosan.
 








 
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