Re: Adjacent i.d. tools run into chuck

dlevy wrote:
I just bought a Haas SL30. Adjacent i.d. tools will run into the chuck. Does that seem reasonable? Do other machines have this limitation? Should I have known this?


It's one of those "live and learn" things. Every lathe has this problem. It's just a matter of how big the chuck/workpiece needs to get before the problem actually limits your work. Good builders offer diagrams of the machine's real working capacity. Many include them right in the back pages of the sales brochure. Things like X and Z travels, swing over bed, and number of tools, are usually less than half of the story.

Many builders offer the same size machine with a couple turret options, as a way to deal with the exact issue you're confronting. The machine might come standard with a 12 station turret, which gives you 30 degrees of angle between the tools stations. That, and the diameter of the turret (distance from turret center to the centerline of a typical boring bar holder) will determine how big a chuck or workpiece you can use with adjacent tools positions filled. Put an 8 station turret on the same machine, however, and you get 45 degrees between stations, and a much larger real turning capacity.

It might seem that you're giving up 4 stations to get the extra diameter when you switch from 12 positions to 8; but if you do mostly larger work, you might frequently need to leave every other station empty. In that case, you're actually going from 6 stations to 8, and the turret option with more clearance might make more sense.

If you bought the machine new, you might want to contact the dealer and see if he's willing to help, maybe even to trade your machine for the same model with a turret better suited to your needs. I don't know for sure that Haas offers turret options; but a good dealer won't just accept the fact that the machine isn't as good for you as you'd hoped. Obviously, you'll want to do that immediately. Once the machine is even a little bit used, the dealer's options for helping you become severely limited.

Look at the sales brochures you got while shopping for a machine, and see if they have an "interference diagram". That's where the good numbers are usually found.

KG



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