Haas vs Makino part 2

[Guest]

I've sat back and looked at this topic and not really chimed in because 1) My company sold Bob the machine that built his business and allowed him to buy a fantastic higher-end machine tool, and 2) We are THE Haas dealer in NorCal, some parts of Nevada, Oregon and Washington so my opinion may may be construed as as biased.

 

With all of that being said, I just kind of look at this topic with the same "I see somebody has an axe to grind" that some folks seem to display on the internet. Does there come a point where a company comes to a crossroads and has to weigh their growth options? Hopefully. We want all of our customers to grow. It helps us, but more importantly, it helps the US Manufacturing sector of the economy. I pray there does not come a day when nobody here knows how to make stuff (and don't give me any of that 3D printing is going to eliminate machining nonsense - it's complete BS. They said the same thing about forging and castings), and guys like Bob that start small/simple and grow into big/complex have companies like Haas to thank for at least part of their success.

 

JM biased 2CFWIW

[Rotary Ninja]

Well said. There are a lot of companies out there making money with Haas machines. And I think they have played a key roll in a lot of American shops moving forward into CNC manufacturing. It's obvious when you look at some younger shops. The Haas's are the oldest CNC's they have. It's a different story in the larger shops though, especially Aerospace and power generation component manufacturers. You hardly see any Haas. You see Cincinatti, Okuma, Mori-Seiki, Matsuura, etc. And in the really big shops around here you see weird one-off prototype CNC's built in Germany in the 70's. Old machines retrofitted with Fanuc controls. But in the small to mid-size mom and pop shops, you will usually find a Haas.

[#Rekd™]

You are 100% correct James. I was on another thread discussing this. Each shop has different needs and budgets to fill these needs. I was trying to point out that the jump in output production maybe able to justify the price increase machine over machine. Resale value and maintenance costs have to be considered as well IMHO.

 

Like MKD stated on the other thread, Haas support is second to none from what I have been told and thier controls are user friendly.

[Joe788]

I think Haas is just about the best machine you can buy, *if* you're selling labor. If you're running the same job for a few days in a row, making gnarly molds, removing lots of material, etc - using a Haas is just flushing money down the toilet. For general purpose, medium tolerance, low/medium complexity job shop work, the stuff Haas has done within the control over the last ten years is hard to beat. Good service, and cheap parts are another bonus.

[Guest]

The most important thing to take away from a discussion like this is perspective. There are different class machine tools for a reason and that's why I just have to shake my head at the prospect of comparing an Acura to a Civic. That's about the real difference between these two machine tools. Both are excellent cars for their respective price and performance categories, and the comparison really serves no real purpose other than to diminish the POSITIVE contribution the Haas made to a whole lot of companies world-wide.

[RayD]

Is Haas the best thing on the market? No

Do they make parts and make people money? Yes

Are they a good value for the Dollar? Absolutely

 

You will find at-least 1 Haas in close 90%+ shops in North America. I would put one in my shop if I owned one. Is it my first choice of a machine? No, but when it comes down to what you can afford a Haas makes alot of sense, maybe not as fast or as efficiently as other machines but a lot easier on the pocketbook.

 

Are there good Chinese/Taiwanese machines out there in the same price point? Yes.. but where do you find parts for them in 5-10 years?

[Bob W.]

The most important thing to take away from a discussion like this is perspective. There are different class machine tools for a reason and that's why I just have to shake my head at the prospect of comparing an Acura to a Civic. That's about the real difference between these two machine tools. Both are excellent cars for their respective price and performance categories, and the comparison really serves no real purpose other than to diminish the POSITIVE contribution the Haas made to a whole lot of companies world-wide.

 

Hey James, maybe I do have an axe to grind. As a Selway employee I am sure you have full access to my reams of service reports and issues I have had with my Haas machines. Care to shed any light on why it took no less that 20 service calls on my two NEW Haas machines to get them working right once they were on my shop floor? I give you full authorization for you to speak on this subject regarding my records and issues. Do you have a guess as to how costly those issues were to my shop in terms of lost productivity and down time? As a shop owner these costs are very real and figure in to the cost of ownership of a machine. It bridges the gap between a $110k and a $150k machine pretty quickly.

[Bob W.]

As I have said in the past, I would NOT be in business if it weren't for Haas. What really pisses me off however, is that they are extremely successful and obviously doing very well, and they are still cutting corners in the quality and design of their machines. They are a marketing machine making suckers of their customers. Can anyone really say with a straight face that the VM series machine is really a "Mold Machine". Come on... The same applies with the SS "Super Speed" machines. Laughable. I'd like to see them actually put in the design and effort to really make those live up to their billing, instead of just changing the pitch of the ball screws, creating a few slick videos and a marketing campaign. I bought a VM AND SS series machine and I was left feeling like a major sucker after the dust settled. ESPECIALLY after the 20 or so service calls to get them working right. Issues included the following:

 

1. Bad spindle - VM3, multiple visits to get fixed

2. Misaligned ball screws in X and Z - VM3, 8+ visits by techs to get fixed

3. Machine unable to hold spec in the ball-bar test - VF2SS, 6+ visits to get fixed

4. Sprung ball screw couplings - VF2SS, 2+ visits to get fixed

5. Bad early power failure detection module - VM3, 2+ visits to get fixed

6. Bad MOCON board on the VF2SS, 2+ visits to get fixed

7. Haas service tech crashed Z-axis while installing linear scale to fix thermal drift issues and DENIED DOING IT! I WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE! - VM3

8. Replace damaged Z-axis coupling that service tech damaged

9. Z-axis ball screw failed a year after service tech crashed it...

 

 

I could go on and on but you get the point... These are the big ones and I am sure there are a few I am forgetting. I made no mention on these issues in the video because my focus was on what sort of PERFORMANCE difference there was between the two machines, and if the PERFORMANCE differences would justify the cost difference. I guess we could expand the argument to include service and reliability.

 

I guess what James is implying is that I should be eternally grateful that there is such a fantastic company as Haas with such a great product to get me in business. Well, that would be the case if I felt that Haas delivered a great product, took pride on their work, and earned my respect. It just didn't happen and that was after owning three of them. Instead it was a constant battle and constant issues and it flat wore me out.

 

To end this rant. The real kicker was the Z-axis thermal growth issue. The Haas has a 40 tool magazine and after loading and setting 30+ tools with the probe I went back and re-checked the first tool and it was out by .005"! It was ultimately because the Ball screw was misaligned causing a ton of heat and growth. When I spoke to the service manager at Haas he asked what sort of tolerance I was looking for on tool setting repeatability. I was pretty generous in saying .0005" since their quoted repeatability as stated on their web site was .0001". He said I could do that no problem as the machine currently sat. Well, this sounded great so I asked how. He said to keep the tools in my tool cart, load them, and set them as they are being used like one would do on a Bridgeport retrofit. NO JOKE, this was coming from upper service management at HAAS! There was a pretty good stream of four letter words after that and they ended up installing a linear scale on the Z-axis because that was the only way they could get in spec. They did the right thing but it WAS A MAJOR STRUGGLE to get to that point with WEEKS of dicking around with local and factory service techs.

[Bob W.]

With all of this being said, I will still continue to do videos doing apples to apples comparisons (as time permits) so people can see side by side how both machines run and perform with the same program. With customer demands these days there is pressure to get jobs done faster and cheaper than ever before and I deal with this daily. Does it make sense as a shop owner to buy ten Haas machines and hire ten guys to run them when I could possibly get the same volume of work done with six nicer machines and six employees? These are the sorts of things I wish I knew before buying my third Haas. This was a time when I was ready to step into a nicer machine and it was fully justified and I truly thought that the Haas VM series was a much nicer machine. I didn't realize that it was just a marketing campaign.

 

I do still have the Haas and I plan to hang on to it for some time. It is great for prepping fixtures for the Makinos and drilling holes and such. I prefer to not interrupt the Makinos for these tasks because their spindle time is much more valuable and they are the money makers...

 

These videos are geared towards folks that have only ever been exposed to Haas machines and have no idea what sort of additional value there might be with a machine that costs 50% more.

[GIZMO 21]

I used to work for a shop using all kitamura machines,but we did a lot of production runs,so taking heavy cuts

Was important.getting the part in the machine and getting it out as fast and accurate as possible.the machines were good at that.

Last year in june i started working for a new company,it was a good opportunity for me, the only thing i didn't like is that it was a haas

Shop,so then i was like what the heck lets give it a try.in that shop each guy has his own machine,his own programming station near the machine.the person makes his own Program,set up,and run his own parts.we make prototypes, so the qty's are low if its a 20 pc order i'ts a big deal,so that being Said.i had a hard time adjusting to the way they did things.my mentality was take as deep cut as possible and it was'nt happening With the haas.common do you really need to be that aggressive when you're only doing 3 pcs ?.we cut everything from plastic to titanium ,and the haas machines do a good job at it.they hold the tolerances that we need,so the haas machines are'nt for everything but they work great for us.we had a vf3 with the large tunnion that uses the whole table,and replaced it with a vf2-yt with a nikken trunnion table sitting along the y axis ,and have a 6 inch vise on the left side of the trunnion very nice setup.the only problem we had at 1st was to get the nikken trunnion to communicate with the haas software,but after 2 or 3 days we got it going we been using the machine without any kind of issues.

[GIZMO 21]

I guess we just got lucky.

[The_kid]

Ok, I can see both sides of this argument. But I gotta say I'm siding with Bob on this one. Haas has there place it is a budget machine and shouldn't be expected to be anything more then it is. I have been in shops that ran all Haas doing aerospace ti castings but believe me I was sweating bullets the whole time machining a $20k part hoping it would hold that .0005 tolerance we have for it. While I have been in other places that have had mori's and would hold a tolerance all night (while no one was there) it makes sense to buy a haas if you just plain don't have the money but if that is the case just buy a used better made machine. You will truly get what you pay for. Performance makes sense no matter what type of work you do.

[GIZMO 21]

I have been in shops that ran all Haas doing aerospace ti castings but believe me I was sweating bullets the whole time machining a $20k part hoping it would hold that .0005 tolerance we have for it.

 

Well, did it hold it?

[Müřlıń®]

We do forging dies. Our HAAS machines are 12 years old and break down on ocassion, but they are cheep and make us tons of money.

 

Would I machine a 20k block of titanium on them?..Hell no! Wouldn't even consider it. Would I run high precision production parts on them? Mabe small parts where scrap rate could be high and still make money. Maybe bigger parts with a huge air handler that could keep the shop@70 degrees and a coolant chiller. No polish molds? Not a chance....

 

The machine must fit the app....

 

Compairing these two machines is not fair.

[Bob W.]

Compairing these two machines is not fair.

 

I hear a lot of that. In what respect would you say it isn't a fair comparison? For me, if I was a shop owner in need of a machine along the lines of a VM3 this machine would definitely show up on my radar, along with Mori's Dura Vertical. They are close enough in price point and feature set that I would be taking a close look at all three. At a cost difference of ~$25k when similarly equipped I would not dismiss the Makino as being way beyond the budget for a VM3. In fact, when I was having all of the issues with the VM3 I was seeking to send it back to the factory and get a different brand of machine all together. Unfortunately at the time the better machines were a significant jump in price at $200k+ and I couldn't afford it. If the PS95 had been around back then I would have really pushed hard to make it happen.

[Müřlıń®]

Here is the thing about machine tools, they can always wear out and break.

 

The haste that occours is how they are used.

 

I guarantee I can tear up any machine tool on the planet in short order machining nickle based die steel I machine every day.

 

You know how many massive hydrotels I have sent to the boneyard over the years?

 

Those things are pretty darn rigid. You can rip off 3\8" depth 5"wide in die steel with a negative tool until the chips are stringing and glowing red.

The servo motors would fault out on a cnc long before you reached that point.

 

I could wear one out in a year easy....have...

 

Now when I wore one out I threw it away and replaced it for 5 grand...

 

You know how much metal removed that was? Inserts 3 bucks a pop....6 sided...you would spend 50 times more perishibles and wear out a expensive cnc. Doing same

 

So my point is....machine must fit app...and I wouldn't know what one machines capabilities are over another unless I had the expeience first hand.

 

20 years ago that ssame machine would have cost 25k...now days you can't give them away. ...they cost too much to move.

 

Knowing which tools to use comes from experience.

[Newbeeee™]

7. Haas service tech crashed Z-axis while installing linear scale to fix thermal drift issues and DENIED DOING IT! I WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE! - VM3

I can only asume that the service tech had been reading this manual...

[Rotary Ninja]

It's Ford vs Chevy to me. For what I do on a daily basis, the little Haas VF2 I run is second to none. There is not a machine out there that I can setup and run parts faster with. Because a lot of the parts I make aren't at the limits of how big of a cut I can take. They are at the limits of what the part and the fixturing can handle because they are complex shapes and hard to hold onto. For the work you do Bob, I probably would not have bought a Haas to begin with. For the work I do... there is no question it would be a VF2.

[Guest]

As a Selway employee I am sure you have full access to my reams of service reports and issues I have had with my Haas machines.

 

I do have access to them but, there are two areas that I do not tread upon, 1) other people's/department's work unless it directly affects what I am working on and 2) Haas.

 

Applications is tough enough and there's plenty of work for me and my guys. If we/I started poking around in the service department's business several things would happen and NONE are good. So I run the Applications department, and Service runs the Service Department. Trust me when I say it is MUCH better when companies run this way. Our departments do communicate when the need arises though because on some occasions a Service issue morphs into an Applications issue.

 

Myself, I only deal with the Matsuura, FANUC, Toyoda, Nakamura, and on rare occasinos a Hwacheon. I have guys that I send to do Haas training. If you were not happy with the training/Applications support you recieved, please let me know PRIVATELY and I will be more than happy to address that so I can get them some additional training either from the factory or elsewhere if necessary.

[Bob W.]

I do have access to them but, there are two areas that I do not tread upon, 1) other people's/department's work unless it directly affects what I am working on and 2) Haas.

 

Applications is tough enough and there's plenty of work for me and my guys. If we/I started poking around in the service department's business several things would happen and NONE are good. So I run the Applications department, and Service runs the Service Department. Trust me when I say it is MUCH better when companies run this way. Our departments do communicate when the need arises though because on some occasions a Service issue morphs into an Applications issue.

 

Myself, I only deal with the Matsuura, FANUC, Toyoda, Nakamura, and on rare occasinos a Hwacheon. I have guys that I send to do Haas training. If you were not happy with the training/Applications support you recieved, please let me know PRIVATELY and I will be more than happy to address that so I can get them some additional training either from the factory or elsewhere if necessary.

 

I have no beef with the service or support I received from Selway. I must admit Selway did a very good job and I really like all of the service techs. The problem I have is that I was still down for weeks because of new machines that weren't up to spec. With a new machine there shouldn't have been any service or support needed.. Nothing Selway could have done about that, it rests entirely on Haas. The guy that crashed my Z-axis was a Haas factory tech that had flown in to work on the machine.

[MotorCityMinion]

This thread may have not even existed had the Haas machines performed in a reasonable manner in the first place. I mean no major down time.

 

I'm starting a new job next week and they have over 90% Haas machines in the shop, 2008 and newer. Just about one of everything Haas makes is in there. There also pushing some rather large / long tooling in a 40 taper VF3, cutting large steel burn outs. They love these machines.

 

In the old shop I worked in I used a vf3 and vf4 circa 1998. These machines would beat the snot out of, and on occasion choke, using a 3" Walter facemill taking more than .12 axial DOC. Use a 1.25 dia. Walter and they ran good.

[Tyler Robertson]

Thread brings up a couple of issues for the forum because anyone reading this on common internet doesn't have 'all the facts'. Haas and their dealers have been good partners for Mastercam, so I wouldn't want it to look like we're providing a soap box for complaints. As it is, often people happy with something don't go online to talk about it nearly as much as someone unhappy. But I think this thread does a good job to show both sides of the issues and there are a lot of great replies.

[mkd]

Haas knows exactly what they are selling and exactly how they are performing in industry (via service reports and applications calls all tracked via serial numbers). i applaud any comparison posted widely on the internet to let potential new customers know objectively from the average of differing opinions as to what is the best tool for their specific needs, or the proper options such as linear scales mentioned above.

 

I have literally spent months trying to get a idiot-designed way cover for a Mori NH4000. the companies could not figure out the proper part number. something lost in translation. the sent the same wrong part 2-3 times in a row. laughable. this would never ever happen with a Haas of almost ANY vintage. if you were putting shingles on a roof would you start at the peak? well that's the way Mori does the y axis way cover. laughable. sell a machine with a direct drive full 4th but no g93 ...REALLY????

edit: oh, and the oil cooler went bad in the first 6 months.

 

recently i interpolated a 1" bore wth a 1/2" endmill on a 2002 VF3. it took several passes to creep up on the light press-fit size. at completion i didn't see more than .0002-.0003" on my bore gauge top to bottom and in four quadrants on the hole. 10+ year old machine with minimal maintenance budget. good enough for me.

Haas sells 600+ machines world wide per month for over a decade. there just aren't that many suckers out there. it's because they offer a good value.

[mkd]

Hey James, maybe I do have an axe to grind. As a Selway employee I am sure you have full access to my reams of service reports and issues I have had with my Haas machines. Care to shed any light on why it took no less that 20 service calls on my two NEW Haas machines to get them working right once they were on my shop floor? I give you full authorization for you to speak on this subject regarding my records and issues. Do you have a guess as to how costly those issues were to my shop in terms of lost productivity and down time? As a shop owner these costs are very real and figure in to the cost of ownership of a machine. It bridges the gap between a $110k and a $150k machine pretty quickly.

some people look down on sales people. i do not; they offer a valuable service. if the sales person asked the right questions they would have been in tune with what your expectations were. if they knew you were expecting less than .0005" z axis repeatability in the process of hours long high RPM mold finishing they should have specified linear scales from the git-go, along with temperature controlled environments to STP. other manufactures such as Makino have the design features that are better suited to what you are looking for. so recomending a different make could have been on the table.

 

respectfully, this to me looks to be a sales failure. sorry, misunderstood the issue

and a marketing failure calling a VM-3 a mold machine.

[Bob W.]

if they knew you were expecting less than .0005" z axis repeatability in the process of hours long high RPM mold finishing they should have specified linear scales from the git-go, along with temperature controlled environments to STP.

 

The .0005" I was looking for was JUST FOR SETTING THE TOOLS! If I set 30 tools sequentially using the tool setter, then went back and reset the first tool it would be out by .005". That is how much growth was going on just during tool setting, not to mention any actual machining.