Old machine threw a fit on a Friday shift in Toledo

Been running this 20 year old Haas for a decade now, but last Friday the spindle drive just gave up mid run on a batch of 60 bracket parts. I was two hours into a four hour cycle, had 23 good pieces done, and had to pull the whole job and recut the offsets from scratch. Ended up finishing at 9pm with a temp workaround using the manual mode on the other mill. Anyone else stuck babying ancient iron like this, or am I the only one who refused to ask for a new machine?

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kimg5712d ago

Wait, you had 23 good pieces done and the spindle drive died anyway? That is brutal timing. Two hours in on a four hour cycle and you still had to start the offsets over from scratch? I would have been throwing tools across the shop (ok, not really, but I would have thought about it). Twenty years is a long run on one machine though, and a decade of you running it means you probably know every weird noise it makes before it quits. Did the other mill at least hold tolerance on the temp workaround, or were you sweating every cut?

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