New Haas Machines and Grease vs Way oil???

[Chris Rizzo]

This is a second hand story, and am looking for any confirmations/experiences...

 

A service tech told a shop owner that I know the new haas machines have greased ways/bearing packs, vs. vactra 2'd oil'd ways..subsequently he has personally rebuilt a new machine that had exclusively cut graphite, due to the graphite contaminating the grease and obviously wreaking havoc. My shop owner/friend is looking at new machine, cuts wood exclusively and is concerned, (believe it or not bamboo is incredibly abrasive, in about an hour it will turn a .250 carbide endmill into a .243 carbide endmill, and keep plowing through material) He's got a call into haas right now inquiring about this, thought I'd ask around myself.

[GoetzInd]

Our makinos have greased guides and screws and seems to work well. Downside is you have to remember to go around and hit all the fittings. Auto grease system is an option but knowing makino its prob 20g's.

 

Mike

[chris m]

We have [2] linear-way Okuma VMCs that are manually grease-lubed and have experienced no issue for the [9] years we've had them, BUT, we are cutting metals not graphite or wood. I would think you'd be OK as long as you greased more frequently to pump out the 'bad' grease and made sure your way wipers were in good shape. The plus side is that it is a lot easier to replace a linear guideway than fix a trashed box way.

 

C

[Bryan Johnson]

another plus to using grease is the reduced oil contamination in the coolant.

 

I have not seen this feature on the new Haas machines.

[Goldorak]

We have [2] linear-way Okuma VMCs that are manually grease-lubed and have experienced no issue for the [9] years we've had them, BUT, we are cutting metals not graphite or wood. I would think you'd be OK as long as you greased more frequently to pump out the 'bad' grease and made sure your way wipers were in good shape. The plus side is that it is a lot easier to replace a linear guideway than fix a trashed box way.

 

C

 

 

x but for 11 years one one of our cadet mill, we machine mainly materials with scale and rust (hot rolled or forging), the machine get very very dirty.

the only negative point , the grease is $$$$$ but very efficient, don't go with standard grease and keep your sliding cover wipers in good shape

[MACHINEMASTERG]

we have Haas machines here and the only one that uses grease is the tool room mill all the others use Vactra #2

[Dave.L]

Chris,

 

It's common that linear bearings (balls and trackes) are greased and box ways are lubed. I can't imagine this having anything to do with new verse old haas machines, it's all about the type of linear bearing / way used.

 

All of our machines with linear bearings use grease and our Mori NL (box way) is vectra lube.

[Chris Rizzo]

The new series machines do have grease packs, all the older ones are oil. After digging deeper here I found out the outfit that had problems machines exclusively ceramic.

[Guest SAIPEM]

Greased ways is nothing new.

 

Fadal was doing this on their smaller machines more than 15 years ago.

 

I like Haas for a lot of reasons but this change sounds like one driven totally by costs.

Haas is notorious for beating up suppliers over price.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Haas customers are is notorious for beating up dealers suppliers over price.

 

 

Fissed for accuracy AND perspective.

[Chris Rizzo]

 

ya gotta take em' for what they are. (and aren't)

 

 

 

sure greased ways are not new in general, I'm curious about this particular switch.

[tonyjohnson]

I just replaced all linear guides on a Mori Dura center 5 with only 250 hrs.Purchased used after sitting 3years.I was told it was synthec. coolant to blame.Watchout ! Tech said its too common now.I understood him to say Mori was using wayoil now. ???

[Newbeeee™]

I know of 3x top quality jap machines (same make/model but no names) that had to have ball screws and/or rails replaced.

They had sat idle for 10 months during the slowdown and the grease packs had solidified. When they fired them back up and run them, big repair bill within a fortnight.

I wouldn't run an engine on dry lube - I'd sooner see some black gold in there running about!

[Bob W.]

Knowing Haas, the change was simply to save a buck. There are a lot of things they could do to make their machines better and changing to grease packs is like a fly on the horses @ss. Better thermal comp algorithms, thermocouple feedback to close the loop spindle thermal growth comp, stretched ball screws, temp control of the ball screws, etc... I spent the better part of a week dialing in the thermal comp settings and I still get .001" or more X and Y axis drift over the course of a few hours of surface machining on the VM3. That is the entire tolerance allowed on the pattern molds I hope to machine someday.

[Bob W.]

Just curious, are there any high end American made CNC machines out there? Any that would be comparable to the Japanese machines (Mori, Matsuura, Makino, etc...)?

[Dave.L]

Bob,

 

Grease for linear ways (ball tracks) is an IMPROVEMENT, not a cost reducing measure, unless they are going to eliminate auto grease systems.

 

And, I hate to say it but the truth is jap machines are the best. Could we do it? Sure we could, but we just lost that market for many reasons.

[Nate S.]

We only machine dry green ceramics and only one of are machines had grease. We installed a lube system on it now. Before that we would get .025 slop in a month. Now it last about 8 months. We would only use this machine for thickness. The ceramic would make a lapping compound. So we went to lube in hopes to wash it away. We have a Hardinge mill with bellow covers over top of the hard covers on each axis and two dust collection systems in side this machine. We also have a Haas VF7 with lube we just installed bigger injectors to help with washing any air born dust off of the ball screws. We were getting 10 months on ball screws and two years on rails. We will see how the bigger injectors work

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Just curious, are there any high end American made CNC machines out there? Any that would be comparable to the Japanese machines (Mori, Matsuura, Makino, etc...)?

MAYBE Ingersoll they only make specialty machines for the most part. Other then them, that's about it.

[dougied03]

This is a second hand story, and am looking for any confirmations/experiences...

 

A service tech told a shop owner that I know the new haas machines have greased ways/bearing packs, vs. vactra 2'd oil'd ways..subsequently he has personally rebuilt a new machine that had exclusively cut graphite, due to the graphite contaminating the grease and obviously wreaking havoc. My shop owner/friend is looking at new machine, cuts wood exclusively and is concerned, (believe it or not bamboo is incredibly abrasive, in about an hour it will turn a .250 carbide endmill into a .243 carbide endmill, and keep plowing through material) He's got a call into haas right now inquiring about this, thought I'd ask around myself.

 

Yes I have seen a new vf 3 ss with this on it.

[Russh67]

Hi:

 

We have 2 HAAS Office mills we use for cutting acrylic lens carriers for surgical glasses, both have the grease packs. It's been a night mare at first. We had the entire lube system replaced in both machines because when we bought them the machines came with 1/8 dia hoses to move the grease. The grease cartridge that came with the machine was of higher viscosity than the grease we got when we ordered refills so the pump could not move the grease throgh the machine. After we had to replace the z axis ball screws on both machines we had them upgrade the lube system to 1/4 dia hoses. Turns out the factory, the Oxnards, made a design change on the office mills and office lathe to change the grease and the lines but failed to notify their customers. So 10g later its fixed and works fine.

 

We installed a vacuum system to collect the dust...it helps but the machines need to be cleaned every day. May you could look into a system of removing the graphite and/or bamboo or whatever during machining. Our vacume works but the acrylic dust does gunk up on the ways and ball screws it gets everywhere. I go in and clean what I can periodically.

 

But the grease in now working fine as long as you keep an eye on those cartridges and don't let them run out it takes a while its easy to forget about them some times.

[CarbonCAD]

We manufacture only graphite parts and have experience with grease and oil. Anybody buying a machine for graphite should seriously think about way oil for their x axis(vert. mill).

[Machineguy]

There used to be a grafite option for the Haas machines. A lot more seals everywhere. $$$ If you buy a machine for cutting grafite and dont include that option, GOOD Luck.

With grease you dont get the coolant contamination.

 

All the new Haas's come with the grease lube. At least the mills do.

 

Machineguy

[Pilot Plant Supervisor]

I welcome the change to grease. All of our Haas machines use oil and it all ends up in the coolant.

[Chris Rizzo]

Update: So yes their new machine was a grease system. Seized the Z axis in about 1 month. That was with a decent dust extraction system.

 

Since then they built a pretty clever system to pressurize basically the entire machine casting cavities. Air flows out of all the way covers, and has proved an effective solution.

[Newbeeee™]

Since then they built a pretty clever system to pressurize basically the entire machine casting cavities. Air flows out of all the way covers, and has proved an effective solution.

I hope the extraction system is top notch then. As soon as you open the machine doors, the 'pressure' inside is surely released, allowing what is inside to 'rush out'.

Does the operator wear diving gear