CNC Lathes

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

I love the Haas control panel, but the quality of their lathes is not great. They have serious issues holding a constant diameter when turning, small adjustments in offset (.0001") often leads to much bigger changes in actual part size, and faces quite frequently don't end up flat. I was making some parts that had to be 2.48" +/- .0004", and if you bumped the offset up by .0001", you could expect to see the diameter increase by at least .0004". It was an absolute nightmare to hold those tolerances. Keeping another part flat and parallel to within .005" was incredibly difficult as well. It took a lot of taper adjustments on the facing operation to really dial it in to cut the face flat.

For FRC purposes, these tolerances probably won't matter, but anyone buying one of these machines should be aware of its tolerance issues. They're cheap, and I guess they're decent machines, but you definitely aren't going to see the same level of quality as you will in their vertical mills (which can also be a little lacking sometimes).

Older Haas lathes are known to be of suspect quality but the new ST and SS series are supposed to be much better.

The tolerances you were trying to hold are well within the range of what the machine can achieve. Sounds like there's something physically wrong with it.