Steve's Things

The company I work for has recently purchased a Haas VF-5 40 taper machine to augment the capabilities of the shop. Seeing as they didn’t have one before, this will greatly improve the capabilities of the shop.

The item of interest to me is the fact that it’s brand new and Haas has made a number of changes to their CNC mill line. Aside from their new higher contrast 2-tone paint job and sharper featured shrouding, here are some interesting changes that they’ve made. This may not be new to some people but if you haven’t used a haas made in the last 4 years or so, this may be of interest.

The Control

The new haas control

Nothing amazing about this control aside from the fact that the screen has a lot more info packed on the screen. Selecting one of the screen buttons toggles between the panels rather than actually displaying a different screen. None of the buttons have changed their functionality otherwise. I do find the screen switchovers to be a bit laggy and difficult to read at a distance but it is otherwise OK. Also Probong has a much more integrated setup than in previous versions whereby you can offset tooling from the tooling screen.

The Jog Pendant

The Haas Jog Pendant now has an LCD screen and greater functionality

Like the image says, the pendant now has an LCD screen. It also features two sets of dials and a toggle lever for axis slelection rather than the rotary switch allowing you to use it without looking too much at the labels.

The larger dial on the face is an analog dial that allows jogging at various speeds and goes about a quater turn left and right that springs back. the smaller one serves the original purpose of increment jogging. Increments are chosen on the screen rather than on a dial.

Also, things like current program, offsets, and various other minutia can be displayed.

The Screen on the Haas Pendant

There are is a problem though. That being the noticable lag from the pulse encoder to motion occuring on the machine. Often times when you want to move there is a considerable time difference from when you turn either the analog wheel or the pulse encoder. Also when you use the pulse encoder at a high rate, it skips many of the ticks or gets “jumpy”. the motion is not smooth.

Overall though the functionality is greatly enhanced.

The rest of the machine

Here are some of the other changes I’ve noticed.

• Quieter Spindle
• Different Coolant arrangement
• Different design on the programmable coolant
• Larger casting
• Side window locks
• an additional set of shelves on the side with a light
• Power saving settings
• Different Shrouding and duo-tone paint.
• Removal of coolant tray around table
• Shrouding around chip spigot
• Raised handlebars for moving coolant tray

There are probably more changes than are what is listed here. Here are some pictures of the machine