Had a run of 17 parts in a row scrap out on the old Haas last Thursday

Everything was running fine on a batch of 304 stainless brackets, then the finish just went to junk. I checked the tool offsets, the coolant mix, even the program, but it turned out the spindle bearings were getting noisy and the vibration killed the surface finish. Has anyone else had a Haas VF-2 start to chatter like that before it totally fails?

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3 Comments

quinnmitchell6mo ago

I used to blame the tooling, but a bad spindle will do that every time.

4

laura_lane6mo ago

Man, that's rough. It's wild how a tiny bit of play you can barely feel by hand just wrecks a finish. I had something similar once, but it was the drawbar getting weak. The tool would pull out a few thousandths under heavy cuts in steel, and it looked just like chatter. Might be worth a quick check if the spindle taper is clean too, any chips in there can act like a bad bearing.

1

alice_wilson736mo ago

Oh, the joys of chasing ghosts in a machine. You start checking the drawbar and end up rebuilding the whole thing.

2