Showerthought: Older Haas machines supposedly run more reliably than the new ones

I was reading through a forum last night and saw some guy claim that Haas machines built before 2015 have a lower failure rate than the ones rolling off the line today. He had data from a shop in Ohio that tracked 40 machines over 8 years. Said the newer ones crash the spindle way more on high speed ops. Has anyone else noticed this trend in their own shop, or is that just one guy's bad luck?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie_smith1mo ago

Probably just a sample size thing, one shop's luck isn't a trend. I'd want to see failure rates from a few dozen shops before blaming the whole production line. It's easy to get spooked by a bad experience (especially on a $50k machine) but manufacturing variances happen across any brand.

hayden7091mo ago

Yeah @jamie_smith I get that but man, when you're the one staring down a $50k paperweight it's hard to just call it "variance.

the_riley1mo ago

The whole "variance" thing gets thrown around way too much in my experience. It's like when my buddy's internet kept dropping and the provider kept telling him it was "normal network fluctuations." Yeah, fine, until you're trying to work from home and your whole day gets wrecked. Same logic applies here - one bad $50k machine is a huge deal for the person who paid for it, and just calling it variance doesn't make the money come back. I've noticed people in almost every hobby or trade will brush off a bad product as bad luck until it happens to them, then suddenly it's a systemic problem. Maybe we should all be a little quicker to admit when a specific model or run has a real issue instead of hiding behind statistics.