Team SCREAM's new Haas CNC tools

[mrwright]

We are so excited to have our new Haas CNC mill and lathe up and running. We received a huge grant through our department of education for these machines, the tooling, and several manual machines. I can't wait to start making parts!

[bEdhEd]

"Huge grant" may be an understatement if you're talking about Haas. I want one so badly for our shop. In due time. I might have to do some schmoozing with the district. Congrats!

I'm feeling like my team is sorta kinda less than grateful, though, since our shop already has three CNCs; two for metals, and one for plastics and wood, but what we want so badly is the cutting speed! The speed of these machines is hypnotizing when they run.

[mman1506]

Wow! I was wondering why you decided to purchase a CNC lathe over a second CNC mill with a 4th axis which serves a more practical purpose for robotics IMO?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by mman1506

Wow! I was wondering why you decided to purchase a CNC lathe over a second CNC mill with a 4th axis which serves a more practical purpose for robotics IMO?

Different teams. different styles.

I don't see a point to a 2nd mill.

I'd take router, then lathe.

[magnets]

Wow. That's some nice equipment. If you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you get such an awesome grant?

If you have any details like tooling/CAM software/feeds and speeds or parts you make, could you share them with us?

I would likely take the CNC lathe before a 4th axis. All I've ever seen teams use their 4th axis for is hex shafts or jobs that only require a few indexing moves. You could likely just put an indexing table with tailstock in your 3 axis mill and put in pauses in your program to let you rotate the part.

The CNC lathe can actually be a pretty useful machine if you know how to program for it. I don't know the specs for this specific machine, but the Haas lathes are usually pretty powerful.

Again, it all depends on the team.

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Different teams. different styles.

I don't see a point to a 2nd mill.

I'd take router, then lathe.

I'm not saying 4522 is wrong, I'm just interested to know what they are planning to use it for. We own a fairly decent CNC lathe and it rarely gets used except in manual mode as 99% of our lathe operations are cut off and facing.

At least with a 4th axis you could indexing for hex shafts.

[mrwright]

We have been in a growth/expansion mode the past two years with our engineering program and with our team. Luckily I am the head of both so each program has complete access to these machines.

We received the grant through our department of education because they have funding for high demand career fields that are showing critical shortages. Our town, Sedalia has a huge presence of manufacturing facilities as well as an abundance of machine shops. They are constantly trying to find qualified skilled people to come work for them. We have a community college here in town that has a machine tool program as well as CNC and we were able to partner with them to develop our own machine tool program here at our high school.

With this new program and along with the grant funding we purchased these machines along with other manual tools. The students also receive dual credit at the college.

One of the major reasons why we chose the lathe over the 4th axis, or another mill was because of our program goals of preparing our students with a wide variety of machining and programming skills that will better prepare them for careers.

I realize that the lathe will probably not be used quite as much as our mill for the robotics side of things but it will definitely be put to use. One of the things that we love about the Haas toolroom lathe is that it can be used just like a manual lathe if needed.

We built a 4x8 CNC router table last year and we love it.

[Chadfrom308]

mrwright, I have used Haas toolroom lathes before (as well as the ST series) and they are amazing machines. The TL series lathes are perfect for students. They are not high speed machining centers (which is a good thing, it means you can usually catch your errors before you break something expensive ) Anyways, how did you get such a good grant? I am very jealous!

And I see you got the TL-2p which means it has a chip auger. That, my friend, is a good decision, unless you want to torture the freshman


Also, is that a Renishaw probe? Very nice. That will save you a couple of broken bits!

[mrwright]

Chad,

The grant came from our state deptartment of education. There is a lot of money out there for STEM education. It takes a lot of planning and work to apply. This grant actually is a 75/25% matching grant as well. This means that our school picked up 25% of the cost which is still a lot. We are really fortunate to be supported by our district so much.

The TM2-P does have the option of adding a chip auger, but we elected to pass on it. Students will enjoy quality time with the machine by scooping out the chips by hand. The P option means that it has the automatic tool changer

It does have the Renishaw probe though. It is an awesome addition to the machine. Our students will be learning how to touch off tools and setting offsets both manually and with the probe.