MASTERCAM V9 TO HAAS MANUAL
MASTERCAM V9 TO HAAS SOFTWARE

When getting the electrical hooked up for this machine, think about driving a solid copper rod about one inch in diameter, into the floor and into the ground below. Lots of adjustments to getting these changers to work correctly. If there is another change involved in the program, then the tool changer rotates to the appropriate slot and the cutter is grabbed. At that moment the spindle housing comes up and the changer moves back into its normal 'at rest' position with the holder in its numbered slot and is held there by the changer. The grippers then have to release the taper holder. As part of the tool changing process, the spindle housing has to stop at the EXACT height and then the changer comes in from the left side to grab the holder. This happens quickly and is very powerful! This will take fingers off in a micro second if fingers are in the 'wrong place'! The first time you do it, it is a little scary. The red release button the the face of the spindle housing operates the pneumatic parts of the spindle gripping mechanism that pulls the holder and cutter into the spindle and grabs the grippers on top of each tapered holder. Keep hands and all fingers as far away from the taper as far as physically possible. Manually putting cutters into the spindle and then loading into the tool changer is a very dangerous part of the operation. I know because it has happened to me! Not a great moment.

MASTERCAM V9 TO HAAS MANUAL

You have to have a manual to walk you through this.a holder set 'cock-eyed' in the changer in either removal of the holder OR replacing the holder back into the changer, a holder that goes not quite 'make it to the changer and is dropped on the table (and the work piece!), a completely jammed tool change somewhere in mid-change It won't go forward or backward (this one can be very tricky and dangerous. That can get very 'dicey' depending where in the process this occurs. You CAN get JAMS with these tool changers (at any time in the tool change process!). I'm just guessing, but I believe that mill had a #40 taper on the holders (again just guessing). A single 'manual' tool change would be better and much safer for the operator and the mill. In my experience with this mill, that might be trouble and you could cause serious harm to the changer mechanism. Marty made a suggestion of programming a few repetitive tool changes into the controller and 'letting it go'. There is a lot of mechanical pieces in these changers that ALL have to work precisely as designed and in the correct order. If you are not familiar with CNC mill tool changers, I have a couple of points to make. Now to the specifics of the issues with the tool changer. He got a nice tax write-off for the donation and you get a great little CNC mill. Sounds like good news for you with the donor sending his chief machinist out to help with your restoration. The tool changer issues can open a whole new set of issues as far as trouble shooting the problem AND fixing it. I would suggest contacting Haas Automation and maybe they might be able to help with a donation' in the form of a service tech to help you solve your 'problems' with this machine. We have a similar facility out here in Southern California. I visited your website for Loveland Creator Space and it's a great idea for the community of engineers, machinists and designers to get together.

MASTERCAM V9 TO HAAS SOFTWARE

We used MasterCam v9 (a single 'seat' of MasterCam software is $13,000-$14,000) to do our tool paths and had special 'post processors' to run the programs in our two Haas vertical mills. That particular software is much to elementary to be used for a Haas. You also mentioned that you wanted to know if you could run Mach3/4. Having a mill such as yours is great for a 'gift', but what you want to do for a conversion could get very, very pricey.

These machines are not cheap to repair and you need a qualified Haas serviceperson to work on these. The bottom line is that controller was $12,000 at the time. The 'trainer' control was essentially a Haas controller that was not attached to a machine, but you could literally do everything with this controller that you could do on the machine: adjust speeds, feeds, edit programs, transfer programs from a floppy and on and on. 20 years ago, the price for a replacement CRT was around $1000 installed. Haas controllers are basically FANUC controllers. At the end of my 40+ year career as a journeyman die sinker (made press forging/steam hammer forging dies), I programmed and operated Haas vertical mills.

Mastercam v9 to haas