Equipment Spotlight: Haas VF-8

The Haas VF-8 is able to do beveling work and it can also do drilled and tapped holes. This machine can also grind off the material and make it different thickness on a part. With the Haas machine, we can accommodate up to a 30-inch by 40-inch plate and drill up to 4 inches thick depending on the weight of the plate.

Video Transcript 

Kloeckner Metals is one of the largest metal distributors in the world. We’re very large in the United States. We have over 50 locations to service everything from long products, flat rolled products, aluminum, and stainless.

The CNC is a Haas VF-8 milling machine. The HAAS machine is able to do beveling work, it can do drilled and tapped holes. It can also grind off the material and make it different thicknesses on a part. We can accommodate up to a 30-inch by 40-inch plate and drill up to 4 inches thick depending on the weight of the plate. We can keep up to 30 tools on the machine, and change is automatic.

The digital capability is very similar to our two blazers where we can communicate wirelessly in terms of programming, and then also there is an actual computer hooked up next to it. The operator can put his own programs into the machine. It was a completely new machine that we bought. We needed more value added capabilities here. We did a lot of research and decided that the Haas brought the most quality machine for our needs. We have upgraded the programming software that’s actually out at the machine.

We’ve got quality people running a lot of these machines, and they’ve got years of experience. They are constantly training on how to improve what we’re using on the machines. We’re downloading and making sure we’ve got up to date software on it. It benefits our customer because we’re able to quote different packages and also solve additional issues for our customer. Instead of just burned holes and punched holes, we now have the ability to drill, tap, face mill, and perform other machining functions to solve our customer’s issues.

More and more parts now are requiring more holes, which the CNC machine can do in a much more efficient time than our burn tables. It gives us the ability to quote a variety of different parts. We’re able to diversify our market share. There’s really no answer no to any question with our machinists and with our ability to turn tooling fairly quickly. It gives us the capability of not sending and outsourcing ports with outside vendors. We can do everything in house.

The Haas machine brings a lot of added value for Kloeckner. We’re able to do parts for other branches. If we need to machine the parts down, we can do that. It does a beautiful bevel on the parts if we need that also. Now we’re able to offer a much nicer drilled hole, the drill intact, other functions that a lot of customers require that we weren’t able to offer in the past.