Hi,

I recently purchased a 2010 SMM2 and have been struggling to get the tool to track properly at the speeds I am used to running. I am sure it has something to do with the default smoothness and corner rounding settings. But I just can't seem to dial them in. Since it was used, not sure if anything else deeper in the menus was changed (acceleration?)

I have owned a 2001 Mini Mill for about 5 years and have been very happy with it. I know this machine well and can run it to it's limits with very nice results. With almost all of our parts we have the max corner roudning set to .005". Sometime I'll G187 within the program if needed.

With the Mini Mill I run a 1/4" chamfer at 75ipm to leave a .002" edge break on most of our parts. It will follow the tool path perfectly from the I.D. of a .080" diameter hole (and smaller) to any tight radius or large radius.

On our new SMM2, I try and leave the default smoothness to medium and corner round to .005". Running the same program at the same speeds the chamfer will not follow small I.D. holes or a tight radius. It is very jerky. The chamfer on small holes will not be round (but more square), and on the tight radius it will look like a bunch of facets. These are true arcs and circles.

If I slow the cutter down to say 40ipm or less, it starts to look better. I also have to set the smoothness to Fine (G187 P3) on certain holes and tight radius to get the tool to follow nicely, which slows the feed even more. And even then, it does not look as good as our older mini mill which is running faster.

This is not just a 1/4" chamfer thing, but a machine thing with any tool. I just used the 1/4" chamfer as an example.

Basically, the SMM2 has a hard time tracking (for lack of a better word). I am sure it is a machine setting, but probably something deeper within the menus.

Another example is with a 1/2" Rougher that I normally run at 112ipm. On the Mini Mill, cutting out a small 1/4" shaft the tool moves very smooth around the shaft. On the SMM2 with the same program the tool tries to speed up and slow down in each of the 4 quadrants as it's cutting out the shaft. It is very jerky. If I loosen up the corner round to say .020" or .025", it does smooth out.

But this does not work well with finishing tools keeping the corner round so loose. With a 10,000 rpm spindle I thought I could speed up my finishing tools to cut faster and reduce cycle times. But this is not the case. I have to run them slower than my 6000rpm machine to get the finish and accuracy I need.

I have been fighting this for a month or so and it makes programming a huge pain. I spend hours going back and forth in the program playing with feeds, corner rounding, and default smoothness to get the tool to track nicely. On our older Mini Mill, I never had to worry about this. I would program once and part would come out as expected.

I really feel there is something in the settings that I am missing. This machine had a service agreement with Haas since it was new and was maintained well before I purchased it.

Not sure if HSM may help with this, but I don't see why I would need HSM to get the same results as my older Mini Mill without HSM. I know they are different machines, but I would still expect the SMM2 to work at least as good as the Mini Mill with the same settings. I would like to get HSM to run my parts even faster, but not until I can figure out what is going on.

I am open to any suggestions and comments. I'm ready to get Haas over to shop to look over it, but thought I would try and ask around a bit before the service call.

Thanks,

Terry