[Kool Parts]

Does anyone know just what the changes to the ST over the old SL series lathes are? Or is that going to be revealed at Westeck?
I have always farmed out my lathe work but that is coming to a screeching halt. Looks like the 30 for enough Z. I will be using it for 99% shaft work very small cuts.
Mon I am going to call on a few other brands to see what is out there but cant justify 150,000 for this work.
Thanks,
Gary

[Ydna]

I know the base castings are quite different, probably beefier, though I don't know any details there in specific. But all the Haas machines' castings seem to have at least changed coming into this year so I wouldn't be surprised if the STs are the lathe extension of that.

Our HFO said there are notable other lathe-specific changes too but I've yet to look much into it as of yet.

[Donkey Hotey]

I remember very little from the Westec booth (there was just so much). I can tell you that the turret looked much larger and I believe it now holds 12 tools instead of 10. The chips seem to have more to hang up on now since the tailstock rides on a flat, parallel rail like a conventional lathe, rather than the SL20's side mounted tailstock. The ST-SS model gets an even larger turret, though I can't remember right now how many it holds. I think there were also improvements in how the live tooling works (if that's part of your decision).

The thing that stuck out to me was that the new controls offer something like 250MB for $1500 instead of the old 16MB upgrade. That's totally unimportant on a lathe but, for the mill and GR buyers, that's huge. I'm sure there will be people *****ing about the price/MB but, it's still a huge leap in capacity.

[Geof]

..... I will be using it for 99% shaft work very small cuts...... cant justify 150,000 for this work.
Thanks,
Gary

Have you considered the TL2? This will give you the Z length and it can handle small cuts very well. If you are only doing shaft work it is likely you could use the base model TL which comes in well under 150k even with the faster spindle speed. The rapids are slow out of the factory but you can change them.

[JohnJW]

At Westec, Haas also mentioned that the servo encoder has higher resolution, I think it's 8x more . The spindle motor is mounted above the spindle for better heat dissipation. Like Donkey mentioned, the turret has been redesigned and I think I heard the new ST is a complete redesign from the ground up. Live tooling is gear driven.

One thing I learned at Westec is that the live tooling option has an extra servo motor to drive the spindle at low speed as well as a break to hold the spindle in place and extra control functions, but at almost $30k it's still quite steep.

[JohnJW]

Have you considered the TL2? This will give you the Z length and it can handle small cuts very well. If you are only doing shaft work it is likely you could use the base model TL which comes in well under 150k even with the faster spindle speed. The rapids are slow out of the factory but you can change them.

Geof,

How do you increase the rapid? and how much faster?

thanks,

[Kool Parts]

Have you considered the TL2?

Thanks for the input guys. I have concidered the TL2. But I wanted to ck out just what they did to the new version. Maybe now that Westeck is over they will have all of the changes on the web site.
Thanks,
Gary

[Geof]

Geof,

How do you increase the rapid? and how much faster?

thanks,

PARAMETERS 7 and 35 for ACCELERATION and 8 and 36 for MAX SPEED.

On my TL1 and TL2 I doubled them; I have seen posts saying some people have tripled them.

[Kool Parts]

Well I just got a email from a friend that went to westeck. I had asked him to look the ST series over for improvements / changes. He said it took 1 hour to walk the complete show including bull**** to friends time. Sad time to be a machine tool dealer right now..
Anyhoo he said there was some changes made..but not enough..and then preceded to try to sell me on a different brand. So I still don't know anything yet. Almost no info on the mothership web site yet..no hurry..I guess.
Gary

[Donkey Hotey]

He said it took 1 hour to walk the complete show including bull**** to friends time.

Your friend needs to slow down or has very limited scope of what he does. I spent 3 solid days there and was busy the whole time. Those shows are what you make of them.

Did he stop at the Kurt booth, or any others, or did he just walk past everything, assuming it was all the same? Homework question: what big change did Kurt just introduce in their 6" vise series?

[Kool Parts]

Homework question: what big change did Kurt just introduce in their 6" vise series?

Alrighty then..
Homework question:
What changes if any did HAAS do to the new ST series Lathes?
Please don't tell me you spent all of your time looking at vices..:devious:
Gary

[Geof]

.....Please don't tell me you spent all of your time looking at vices..:devious:
Gary

Only the evening hours should be spent on looking at vices.:stickpoke

[Kool Parts]

Only the evening hours should be spent on looking at vices.

Now that's a statement I can get behind..I might have misunderstood..Now I need some show pictures
I wonder how IMTS will be this year..I already have the hotel and flight paid for that one.
Gary

[JohnJW]

I read that Westec is being turned into a biennial event.

http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/23...biennial-event

Why don't they just bundle it as part of that 5 in 1 automation + plastec + packaging + design + medical manufacturing show in Anaheim so it's cheaper for the vendors and we get to see and learn more. For a newbie like me, trade shows are great for learning. . . . However, not all sales people share that attitude

[Kool Parts]

They need to just slip a pillow over its face and push hard..put it out of its misery
Hopefully the AMMO show in Vegas will completely take its place. The attendance would be much better and would more represent the west as a whole.
Gary

[unassumption]

The changes to the ST are numerous. The base casting is totally redesigned. The tail stock is a much stoughter design. The wedge angle of the turret is now 45 degrees instead of 30. There is more clearance on the turret backside too, I put in a 1" boring bar and didn't have to cut it off to clear the turret. The tool probe is automated. They use a chip conveyor now instead of an auger. The machine looks to be totally redesigned from the ground up. The IPS software allows you to draw the part profile on the screen without having to trig out any points. Before we bought our machine I saw one at the Charlotte machine tool show with a 3" inserted drill put a hole in 1018 on a machine without the gearbox option. I think the torque for a machine without a gear box is 275 ft lbs. We bought out machine with a gearbox, 850 ft lbs of torque. The machine has held great tolerance, .0005" easliy. Would I buy another one? without a doubt. The service and support has been excellent. The sales guy for our area is a former machinist, he can program the machine blindfolded, which is a big plus the times I've had questions. He's been in to help us get up and running and helped with any programming questions we had over the phone usually. Most sales people in this industry can't even turn the machine on.

[Ydna]

Haas put up a video on their website under the new generation machine promo. Check it out!