Haas TL series lathe

[Mick]

Hi there,

 

Does anyone here have one of these lathes? Our toolroom is looking at purchasing one, and I was wondering what your feedback was on these machines. I assume they interface well with Mastercam?

 

Regards,

 

Mike

[jhjr]

Where I used to work they had a new tl3w. I liked the lathe at first but it had chatter problems. From what i've read this is only a problem with the larger lathes. The tailstock was junk also, wouldn't repeat & pushed when you had a larger part in it. Make them let you run some test parts on the spefic size lathe you wish to buy before committing. We ran test parts on a tl2 for us and it worked great, the 3W was a big difference than the tl2 we test ran. Disappointing. A Haas tech said the machine was fine when we had them look at it and a coworker agreed. A few days later the same coworker said why is this chattering? I could've strangled him. The control & intutive system are very nice. Mastercam will work fine with it. I did the same as Derek, used longhand not canned cycles from mc. Research the spefic lathe you are looking at online. Overall the lathe was ok with work arounds but I think I would look elsewhere if I had it to do over.

[Mick]

Thankyou very much for the concise feedback guys. I'll pass your comments on to our tool room manager. I'll let you know how we get on

[Mr. Wizzard]

We have a TL-2 here, as well. Great simple machine to get up and running quick. Like all the machine discussions go, Haas has it's purposes. Don't plan on roughing the crap out of 17-4 PH with it or you'll be disappointed. The IPS is awesome for being able to get something efficiently accomplished without having to spend time on the computer. I do half and half, here. If I don't want to bother on a simple part, I just use the IPS and start making chips. If you get something more complex, like the guys said already, MPMaster with a little tweaking works sweet for me. Start out posting long-hand, without the canned cycles and you can fly. When you get the time, the post can be "fixed" up to get the canned cycles running smoothly.

We also have a Haas GT-10, nice little guy for small parts. I do mean small parts. Very well priced and it will kick little things all day long.

Good luck to you.