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Shoutout to the old manual handwheel on my 1998 Haas mill, 0.0005 backlash finally convinced me to skip the retrofit
I checked the backlash on that old handwheel with an indicator three weeks ago at our shop in Akron and got 0.0005, which is tighter than the specs on half the newer machines I've run. I was all set to push our owner to spend $14k on a retrofit kit, but that number made me admit the slop I was feeling was the worn ballscrew on the X axis, not the handwheel at all. How do you guys draw the line between fixing old iron and finally letting it go?
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jamie_price3d ago
Spent two hours last month measuring every axis on my old Bridgeport before I admitted the real problem was me being too cheap to buy a new indicator. Fixing old iron makes sense when the parts are cheap and the frame is still solid, but once you're looking at a ballscrew and a retrofit, the math starts to favor a machine payment. Draw the line at half the cost of a decent used machine, because past that you're just paying to stay sentimental.
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