Anti Haas bashers

[Mike1974]

Sorry if it's too tongue in cheek, or obvious...

I am a Haas fan. I would like to hear from other "fans". No affiliation, but I heard all the time on the other site how terrible they were and kind of tired of it. Who else is running Haas and liking them (me!). The control is pretty sweet, the iron is, maybe I guess ok compared to higher end machines, but from what I have said before, more or less, not everyone needs a Cadillac to get back and forth to work.

My (where I work) shop is getting ready to buy a new VF4ss. This will make #6 of Haas mills, plus a little TL2 we have. Our shop is rocking with Haas machines, we do aluminum and brass, BUT holding .0002-.0004" tolerances all day. Kind of a niche industry from what I have seen, but it's a great job (sorry a bit of a tangent LoL)... I get to order almost any tooling I need, salary employee... Sorry random thoughts... but anyone else wants to share Haas "success stories"..???

 

[Delw]

Mike
I have a love hate relationship with hass. not the machine so much but the HFO here in AZ as well as parts. main reason why I wouldnt buy another one.
Ive had it new since 2009 its a vf2ss with full 4th. we run production work on it mainly alum. It repeats every f'n day cold hot etc etc
I get a twitch every once in a while to buy another one not a vf2ss cause there weak, would be a vf3ss due to the weight and rigidity. if I need something done fast and quick it goes on the hass. set-ups for most jobs are done in a few mins compared to the fadal(mainly do to the probing on the hass).
for an alum/ plastic/brass machine there pretty damn good,

only dislikes is the fact that it sucks balls with indexable tooling on stainless. inco and ss cut great with solid carbide though.
My old fadals are stronger and more rigid can use indexables with no problem one repeats just as good as the Hass the other one with in a .001, that one needs some thrust bearings I believe.

if I didnt have the fadals there would be no way I would buy a hass in az

 

[Booze Daily]

I have two VF2SS w/4th. An '05 and '06. One has TSC, both have probing.

I bought them new because of bang-for-buck. The salesman was terrible. If I hadn't already decided on Haas, I would have looked elsewhere.

I like mine alot, and I'm starting to get work that is over 30" long so I'm debating on either upgrading one to VF4 or adding an additional one at VF4 size.

I'm only a 1 man shop with no plans of hiring so I don't know that 3 VMC's is really the way to go.
I don't do much production milling.

 

[g-coder05]

Haas just makes things simple with their no BS pricing and service. I like Okumas, Mori, Mazak and agree 100% they are better machines in most cases. I see the most "Haas haters" have been that way since the beginning when Haas was in it's infancy and was weak and undependable but the newer gens are very capable machines.

The ROI for Haas has been the deciding factor for me. If I can get a VF2-SS for $69k or the same in a Genos for 130K I have to look and think why not get two VF2's with a multiple machine discount for the same as one of the big three (Okuma, Mori, Mazak)? These days the only thing the big three have over Haas is accuracies. Speed and MRR is dictated by tooling and HSM strategies, not rapid moves and brute force like 20 years ago. If a shops charging $120 an hour per machine running Haas making general widgets then shop B cant tell the same customer they have to charge $150 an hour because their machines cost more.

And multiple machine discounts!!! Haas is unbeatable. When I took the contract at Star PT in China they had 4 little Cutting brand CNC's and were outsourcing 75% of their orders. Haas gave us 30% off and included a free HRT-210 and Probing with an order of 3 or more at a time. I don't ever foresee any of the Javanese brands offering a deal like that.


We went prom Pic#1 to Pic#2 in just three months thanks to those kind of discounts. The owner true to his word still fired me 2 years and 48 new machines later for not being able to keep up with demand.

 

[Doug]

...and what did your replacement doo differently ?

 

[lobust]

I have spoken about this before on PM a few times, but never from the angle of defending Haas

I don't know if this applies anywhere else in the world, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the resentment towards Haas in this country comes from shitty salesmen who overpromise and aren't up front and honest about what Haas machines are, and what they aren't.

I know of one specific case of exactly this that had catastrophic consequences for the company involved (company making downhole completion / cabling tools), and one other lower profile one that had a really bad time and also folded a few years later (company making slurry pumps for drilling operations).

I don't know for a fact that in the second case they folded as a direct result of replacing their entire fleet with Haas, but I do know that they had a lot of problems for an extended period of time trying to get back up and running.

Both replaced fleets of older Moris/Mazaks/Okumas etc. with Haas machines, no doubt because of the attractive bulk order discounts mentioned by gcoder, and collapsed when they couldn't make their parts on their new machines.

Around the same time we were shopping for another 50 taper VMC, and a Haas guy tried really hard to talk my boss into buying a 40 taper VF6, even after I showed him some of the parts we were making, he just doubled down. That would have been an abject disaster, and gave me some insight into what was going wrong elsewhere.

Only an idiot would say that Haas machines are just bad. They are good at what they are built for. I think salesmen have a lot to answer for.

 

[g-coder05]

...and what did your replacement doo differently ?

From what I hear the new guy is just cruising on the heals of my accomplishments.
I'm good with it, My pride moment was getting to be on the panel with Gene Haas, Barry Rodgers, and Gordon Styles to get the "Nuclear capable" law removed from 5 axis exports. That was a proud moment installing the first ever American made 5 Axis machine in China.

It took about six months of dealing with DHS but when it was all said and done Gene was extremely generous with that UMC-750 after helping him get permission to sell trunions and other 5X machines inside mainland.

 

[Mud]

Which one is you?

 

[g-coder05]

Which one is you?

According to my ex wife I'm the short, fat, bald asshole.

 

[Delw]

I dont think hass made crap machines persay, with the exception of the early Lathes. there stuff works pretty good. buddy of mine had a hass mill shop back in the early 90's. thos older box way hass's were strong ass machine and made an almost perfect circle every time.

There early lathes are what was junk and gave them a bad rep. in the 90's. not to mention they were priced with the med end Japanese lathes. turrets and there tool holder systems were the weak link on these as well as they had no balls to cut anything but alum.
looking at it 10 years later those haas lathes have come a long way now 30 years later there pretty impressive but use shitty chucks.

the salemen are the ones who have given hass a bad rep as well, not to mention some of there techs. hass salemen wise most of them have no clue what there talking about, only machining they pretty much know is what they seen on videos or what they see someone doing in a machine shop there trying to sell machines too.

 

[Delw]

From what I hear the new guy is just cruising on the heals of my accomplishments.
I'm good with it, My pride moment was getting to be on the panel with Gene Haas, Barry Rodgers, and Gordon Styles to get the "Nuclear capable" law removed from 5 axis exports. That was a proud moment installing the first ever American made 5 Axis machine in China.

It took about six months of dealing with DHS but when it was all said and done Gene was extremely generous with that UMC-750 after helping him get permission to sell trunions and other 5X machines inside mainland.

View attachment 131

Thats pretty cool, i'd be proud too.

 

[Mike1974]

And I am pretty sure no other brands have the resale Haas has. I think we got between 30-40% of original purchase price when we traded our machines in for new ones (VF2ss). Those were both between 6 and 8 years old too.

 

[Mhajicek]

We've got a 2015 VF-3SS here, with the 15K spindle, 1000PSI TSC, and a TR160Y trunnion. Been making Ti bone plates and 17-4 H900 surgical instruments. Yeah it won't drive a 5" indexable very well, but it'll take a 1/2" Helical endmill to its limits with five hours of cutter life. I wouldn't have chosen Haas myself, but it's pleasantly surprised me.

 

[Delw]

We've got a 2015 VF-3SS here, with the 15K spindle, 1000PSI TSC, and a TR160Y trunnion. Been making Ti bone plates and 17-4 H900 surgical instruments. Yeah it won't drive a 5" indexable very well, but it'll take a 1/2" Helical endmill to its limits with five hours of cutter life. I wouldn't have chosen Haas myself, but it's pleasantly surprised me.

Heck I would just like to run a 3/4" 4 flute indexable in mine on stainless , only one we were able to get to run was that sandvick 3/4" cutter with those very tiny inserts doing the tri blah blah(forget the name) path. straight paths its beats the heck out of machine. but that was a vf2ss that vf3 is much heavier

 

[Herding Cats]

So you can't bury that puppy? Sorry


While I'm not a big Haas fan, they are not bad machines and you do get a lot for your money.

I think a lot of the stigma with them is all the new guys getting them cause of the price and thinking they are the absolute cats meow.

I'm sure the ID 10 T salesmen promising they can do things they can't doesn't help matters

 

[Oldwrench]

Anytime you can put two Haas machines on your floor for the cost of one Genos, that is a no-brainer. Maybe I've just been lucky but we have 9 Haas VMCs from 1997 to 2020 and I have yet to run into anything they couldn't do. Of course we aren't faced with the challenges of a job shop, plus I design our parts to be as easy to hold and machine as humanly possible, but still—"Bang for the Buck" rules, in good times or bad.

 

[Mhajicek]

Yup. I'd love to have a linear motor Matsuura or the like, with a huge tool chain and pallet pool, but could have four of these Haas machines for the same price with money left over for tooling. If it's good enough it's good enough.

 

[CNC_Chip_Thin]

All good replies here and I can't disagree with anything. The Haas mill's I've worked with have always been able to get the job done when asked. There were obviously part's that ran better on higher end machine's like a Mazak or Okuma. But never an occasion where the Haas wasn't capable, just not as profitable. The "Bang for the Buck" statement pretty much sum's it up in my opinion.

I do also agree that Haas may have the "bad" reputation due to sales tactics and managers. They do seem to upsell past what the machines real life performance is capable of. However if you're the one responsible for the purchase of a machine to make a part(s) with micron tolerance's at the speed of light. You should have done more research to understand what you are buying and what the results will be. Sorry, not sorry.

*On edit: can't say anything about their lathe's seeing as I've never used one

 

[Delw]

if you look at the pricing hass isnt really that great, by the time you add normal options. Doosan runs about the same price and weighs more as the hass. not to mention its a more rigid machine and still has box ways

 

[Delw]

for a vf3ss exactly configured like my 2008vf2ss.
vf3ss 127k with a h210 full 4th
vf2ss 112k with a h210 full 4th
my 2008vf2ss. had probe, extra macros, adjustable coolant, chip conveyor , full 4th axis I think it was around 120k including a 3k tooling package