PSA: Hit 10,000 hours of spindle runtime on my Haas VF-2 today and the backlash was way worse than I thought

I finally rolled over to 10,000 hours on my machine last shift and decided to check the backlash as a routine thing (figured it would be a couple thou, you know). Turns out I was running with 0.008 inches of backlash on the X axis and had no idea. My parts were wandering around by like 0.005 over the last couple weeks and I just blamed it on tool wear or temperature swings. The ballscrew nut is shot, gonna cost me around $1,200 for a new one plus a day of downtime to swap it. Has anyone else had a machine sneak up on them like this with a big tolerance issue? How often do you guys actually check your backlash?

2 comments

2 Comments

juliawalker6d ago

Laughing my ass off that you discovered 0.008 inches of backlash by accident, man that's brutal lol.

the_julia6d ago

The funny thing about accidental discoveries is they usually happen when you're trying to do something totally different. Last month I found a weird squeak in my car's suspension only after I hit a pothole going way too fast. Now I'm paranoid about every little noise it makes. It's like once you know something's off you can't unhear it.