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I just bought my second Haas CNC mill. I use them primarily to make parts for implantable medical devices, but they could just as easily make parts for small arms, guided missiles, or aircraft. Most big names in CNC machine tools are Eastern; Japanese, Taiwanese, or Chinese, with a few European. Haas, the biggest and most well known Western manufacturer of CNC machine tools, stands accused of continuing to supply Russian companies involved in military manufacturing, long after the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Documents filed with the U.S. Treasury and Department of Commerce indicate that RATEP is one of many Russian enterprises that Haas Automation has serviced with direct shipments of goods in that period.
Per the aforementioned PBS Newshour report, the American company allegedly approved as many as 18 shipments to Russia between March and October of 2022 to the tune of $2.8 million.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 20, @07:42PM (2 children)
Given the price of HAAS kit, $2.8 million is probably a pack of replacement screws, a user manual, or a software update. :)
I'm joking of course, a well-fitted VF1 or VF2 is *only* ~110k USD. The big 5-axis jobbies can crack $500k.
(Santa, if you're listening, I'd be ecstatic with even a little mini-mill. My little sherline is threatening to complain to the Hague if I continue abusing it so far beyond its design limits.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday March 20, @08:06PM
Industrial scale gear is expensive. It's large, needs to work reliably and is sold in relatively small quantities. It's hard to make a profit on small quantities without large per unit margins.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday March 21, @03:47AM
I'm tempted to grab one of these:
https://www.langmuirsystems.com/mr1 [langmuirsystems.com]
No toolchanger, but pretty heavy duty for a hobby mill. My Haas machines are CM-1's, with a 50,000rpm 20 taper, so they can't do heavy cutting. An MR-1 would handle fixture making and the occasional heavier one-off job.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek