Crossed 2,000 hours of spindle runtime on my Haas VF-2SS yesterday

I looked at the machine log yesterday and saw I hit 2,000 spindle hours on my VF-2SS. That thing has been running nearly nonstop for 14 months doing production runs for a local aerospace shop. I never really thought about how much wear we put on these machines until I saw that number. It made me wonder if I should start budgeting for a spindle rebuild or if these things usually go longer. Has anyone else pushed past 3,000 hours without major issues?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ray9d ago

Ask what kind of spindle load you're typically seeing on those aerospace runs. I've heard the 10k RPM spindles on these machines can start showing issues around 4-5k hours if you're pushing heavy cuts all day, but lighter work lets them go way longer. What material are you running mostly and are you doing any high speed machining or just standard feeds and speeds?

simon7179d ago

The 4-5k hour thing sounds like bar talk to me. I've seen those spindles run way past that with no issues if the maintenance isn't garbage.