Learned a valuable lesson, Without breaking anything or hurting myself

[loose nut]

I bought mine from "Single Source Technology" in Auburn Hills Michigan (good people to deal with, you have to set up an account to buy from them but they made it easy and they give good discounts), $318 CDN, they have a office in Mississauga, ON. but Mich. is closer to me. I have seen the exact same model advertised anywhere from $500.00 to $750.00 in tool catalogs and the off shore versions where $270.00US so not much difference dollar wise compared to the quality difference. Shop around before you buy.

[tdmidget]

One thing I have never figured out and no one has been able to explain is how to use the Z axis part of one of those. If you don't use the Z axis, then you may as well use a co-ax or dial test indicator. I have never bought a 3D indicator because I can't see any advantage over what I already have. Can someone who has one explain it?

It's for use on CNC machines. You pick up zero in Z with it and add the length of the taster to get your Z zero.

[Black_Moons]

What you do is move one lever as if your changing ranges and that will depend on which range you have it in. That will lock the spindle between the high/low range and you can insert the collet and whatever with one hand and screw in and tighten the draw bar with the other hand.

When I am in low range I have to use the lever on top to lock the spindle. Sometimes when in low range I don't even lock the spindle since the spindle is hard to turn anyway.

Always give the spindle a quick turn to snap the dogs into gear. I hate to hear the GRRRRRRRRRRCHUNK when I turn the motor on and the dogs are not engaged.

my IH mill has the same thing where the spindle locks beween H/L, but it seems like a hack to me, Id think the gears would be just barley engaging and putting a lot of stress on the corner of the teeth. Insted I just switch it into low gear, if its a big endmill, I switch it to lowest gear, that gives me full gear engagement, and the motors momentium is enough to let me tighten it securely with a few quick yanks.

And yea, try to allways hand spin the spindle while changing gears, because often the gear teeth are not aligned to just shift at any perticular rotation.

On ebay, some guys sell a spline wrench that fits the top of the quill spline, so you can keep it from rotating and get the gears to engage.

As far as the 3 hand problem, Even in high gear its pertty easy to tighten the collet/whatever up enough to keep the tool from falling out with just very quick yanks on the drawbar wrench.

[uncle pete]

Sleazey,
A very good reminder to check everything twice. Their's probably not a member here that hasn't made a mistake something like this at one time or another. You rarely see very many people admit to costly mistakes. I for one appreciate what your post was intended to be. Frankly one would or should expect far more from a world class manufacter than what Haimer has done for a manual listing specifications.

Pete

[Sleazey]

Carid:
Thanks for the suggestion. I only wish I owned a real BridgePort. Someday...

I have a JET JVM-836-3, speed changes are made by changing the belts. No transmission. So the only way to hold the spindle against the force of tightening the drawbar is to use the spindle brake.

The whole 3 hands situation was a major incentive for getting a dedicated end mill holder for the Taster; it was only a matter of time till I dropped the pricey Taster a few inches onto the mill table, trying to hold the Taster in the R8 collet till I the drawbar had tightened the collet enough to hold.


Black_Moons:
Trying to quickly snap the drawbar wrench while holding the Taster in the collet would possibly have worked, even with a belt drive. I never thought of trying that, since it would of course spin the collet some till the drawbar finally tightened up enough. That would have destroyed fixed angular relationship between collet and Taster shank that I was trying to maintain.

But it's something to keep in mind for other situations where I have to hold a tool or an indicator shank in the collet while tightening the drawbar.

[Black_Moons]

Carid:
Black_Moons:
Trying to quickly snap the drawbar wrench while holding the Taster in the collet would possibly have worked, even with a belt drive. I never thought of trying that, since it would of course spin the collet some till the drawbar finally tightened up enough. That would have destroyed fixed angular relationship between collet and Taster shank that I was trying to maintain.

But it's something to keep in mind for other situations where I have to hold a tool or an indicator shank in the collet while tightening the drawbar.

Give it a shot, after finger tightening the drawbar, I don't think my endmills/collets ever rotate (much?) on the snap tighten. I mean, once you start tightening past finger tight, it grabs. You could also really slowly tighten it, keeping under the motors/drive systems 'stiction' level, once its tight enough to overcome that, it should'nt rotate.

[Carld]

Black_Moons, when you shift the side lever into the other position the gears are fully engaged. If they were not then when you shift the top lever into the other position the spindle would not move.

The side lever will fully engage when moved but the top lever only drops the top part down on top of the dogs and if you don't move the spindle to engage them or just by luck engage them they will Grrrrrrrind and clunk into engagement.

[wbleeker]

This thread prompted me to set my Haimer up, I have it on a Tormach TTS holder so there is no problem with collets etc. I read the paperwork that comes with the taster, the diagram is a little difficult to follow. To adjust the taster to run true, you put it in the spindle of your machine and put your most accurate indicator on it and basically set it up like a job in a 4 jaw chuck, you will find that there are 4 2mm hex head grub screws around the top/sides of the dial housing,they are spaced at 90 degrees you use them to do this adjustment.
The null adjustment, which is basically the vertical movement zero setting is done by loosening the two 1.5mm grub screws which are located top and bottom on the left hand side when you are looking at the dial, and tightening one or the other to achieve zero, you have to end up with them both tight.
Hopefully this will help someone else adjust their Haimer
Will