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

Manufacturing Index for November has biggest growth since April '06

This seems to be good news. I especially like the part where is says Machinery is one of 18 sectors that is growing.


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-factory-index-rises-to-nearly-4-year-high-2010-01-04?reflink=MW_news_stmp


Warren

CNC Grounding

I just came across this excellent 10 year old article on CNC Machine Tool grounding this morning. It confirms my long standing belief that ground rods are usually a waste and, in some cases, a serious contributor to problems in our industry. 

Please read it if you can:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/pes/cleveland/Papers/cnc-isa-icps.pdf


Warren

Fadal site

Yesterday, Ron also mentioned a site for Fadal information. I think this is it. You might want to mark it for future reference. Now that the factory is shut down, we may get some requests to work on these too.

http://www.fadalcnc.com/

Warren

Haas Service

Yesterday, Jerry, Ron, Jeff and I were discussing ways to increase business in 2010. One thing that came up was the possibility of aggressively going after more Haas service business. Ron pointed out that he has worked on a few lately and doesn't think that they should be that hard to learn. Our mechanics have been working on them quite awhile, but have complained about the parts situation, specifically their policy to not sell to us.

Travis has mentioned several times that he gets requests for Haas service from new, potential customers.

Obstacles that I see include the parts issue, training on the electronics and operation, and price competition. Although their Factory Store seems to have comparable pricing to us, there are any number of laid off former Haas guys roaming the country, working out of their cars, who would compete with us. Many of these guys are uninsured, so we have an advantage there.

I would like your input on this.

Happy New Year

Warren

Chris pointed out to me that the YouTube link to the recent post regarding the Komo Router at Studwell was broken. Sure enough, the video disappeared for some reason. I've uploaded it again, so here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1v5SK6Y0JQ

Please let me know if it disappears again!

Warren

Christmas Party 2009

We had a great time last week at the old Kellogg House at Cal Poly. Here are a few pictures that Karen Rockwood took. If anyone else has some, let me know. Thanks Karen!

Warren