Fanuc MMI controls

I've been working today at the ITT Fiber facility in Salt Lake City. They have the Komo router that was the subject of a previous blog/video here. Studwell refurbished and re-machined the A and C head on this 5 axis machine. The topic of tonight's blog is the Fanuc 150iMB control, which, unfortunately is a pathetic excuse for a high performance control. The unique thing about these controls is the Pentium III (yes III) PC with 640 K of Ram, running Windows 2000. Today, Greg Rockwood and I were adjusting the Home position of the newly re-installed A and C axes. Setting the grid shift is a tedious process, as most of you know. Every time a new grid shift amount is entered, one must power down and power up. On this machine that takes TEN MINUTES!!!  I lost count after about 15 re-boots, but I could be slower and denser than most. ( In my defense, I had no books, dual feedback, a mis-adjusted Renishaw exposed optical encoder and other problems).

As with any PC, it must be sequenced down and up. This one has been abused by their IT department, and is just awful to work on. Screen updates are very slow.

My point to all of this is that, although these controls are a pain to work on, nearly NO ONE understands them. I think they could be unique opportunity for us. These controls include the 210i, 180i, 160i, and 150i.

If you see one, offer to be called for ANY problems including backing up the hard drive, hooking up the Ethernet, or just changing the CMOS batteries. They tend to be on high end machines.

See you soon,

Warren