Connecting a Haas TL-1 in one day

A third controller family had to appear on the same shift board, timelines and reports as the Sinumerik machines — without changing any report, and without the silent data loss that simple connections to this kind of controller often suffer.

A Haas TL-1 toolroom lathe with the Haas Next Generation Control, which provides its machine data over the machine's own network connection.

• Execution state, operating mode and active program.
• Axis positions and spindle speed.
• Program-end counters.

The EdgeBox reads the data straight from the controller. Two details decide whether that data can be trusted: after a pause, reading resumes without losing anything, and a machine standing idle is not reported as offline. We then assigned the Haas values to the same standard terms as the Sinumerik machines — spindle speed is spindle speed, whatever the controller calls it.

• Execution state, mode, program, positions and spindle speed live, plus program-end counters for part counting.
• The TL-1 on the shift board, in timelines and in reports next to the Sinumerik machines, with no change to the reports.
• An idle machine shown as idle, not offline.

A Haas and a Siemens machine in one overview, with the same figures. Many North American and Japanese controllers provide their data the same way as the Haas. For a mixed machine park this means one comparable view — in practice, not only on paper.