Condensed version of a story much too long to read.

We have 2 new 2012 VF2s, installed the last week of 2012 (about 4 weeks ago). When the HFO set the machine up, I noticed on the Date & Time screen that it said "Next Activation Date 01-25-2013" and then some date in January. Odd considering these machines were paid for by check, in full, in November last year.

Today we fire the machine up and when we press cycle start, we get a warning that the machine will disable itself in 3 days if we don't enter an Activation Code. Fine, time to call Haas. Well, when the part hits an "M00" to flip it over, the whole machine crashes, the screen turns solid red and white stripes and it won't move. We power the machine down, refire and it crashes again on cycle start, this time giving 4 error codes:

102 SERVOS OFF
825 FRONT PANEL INTERFACE FAULT - CRC ERROR
101 MOCON COMM. FAILURE
488 INTERNAL CPU BUS ERROR

Again, condensing the story, it turns out it's because of the Activation feature. I get a new code and all is well.

I have 2 questions:

1: Why did it shut off 4 days early (it would NOT run until I got a hold of Haas)?

2: I got another Activation Code, it expires on 02-20-2013. Why am I still entering temporary activation codes on a machine that we own?