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  1. #21
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by AutomatedIngen View Post
    I'm glad this subject came up. I was about to start a thread myself about the same thing.

    I too am looking to purchase a used machine, for the purpose of having a hobby to restore a machine, as well as in the end having a fully functional modernized VMC, with a retrofit of the control system.

    I think some of the things that would be good for those of us looking to purchase used machinery would be not only finding something with a preferred controller, but finding a machine that is within the right tolerances.

    I'm not sure about your experience levels Tbev, but I think it would be good if someone was to list some of the things to look for when purchasing a used machine (Ball Bar Test, etc.)

    Also another concern that may help in your search would be if anyone knows of any companies that survey CNC machinery (similar to yacht surveyor). A company that has no problem going out, taking pictures, doing test, and reporting back to the customer, acting as an agent. I see on eBay alot of CNC machines saying powered up ready for inspection but at times flying or driving such a long ways is not always a possibility.

    I wish you luck on your search Tbev and look forward to reading or viewing your story slowtwitch.
    Thanks bud, I agree. I started looking into used haas vf3s and I went to talk to the haas factory guys and they were pretty cool about going to check out a potential machine, couple hundred backs will be worth it for sure. In the case of a haas machine you can call the service guy for that area and they will give you all the info on that machine if they have been taking cafe of it, not so easy with Fadal but I'd also be looking to speak with whoever the owner says they used for service.

    I was shying away from already retrofit mills but I think that was a mistake, I've seen lots of retrofits that are much nicer than the stock controllers. The controllers are my biggest concern, hence the thread, what I'm trying to find out is what years are preferred, 88,88hs etc ... Retrofit machines are looking good to me now, I'd like to find something that's ready to make parts, I've got the work for it not the time to work on it at present.

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk



  2. #22
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Fadals are great machines to retrofit. I have a 94 Fadal 4020 running off Kflop and Kanalog control and its working great. The Fadal relay/fuse boards are super easy to connect too as well. I just connected a cheap ribbon cable breakout board and that allows me to control all the outputs of the machine like drawbar, high/low range, all the toolchanger outputs, two coolants, spindle on/off and reverse etc. And theres a bunch of spair slots in the fadal boards for more solid state relays if you want to add more things. Was almost too easy.

    The Dynomotion setup is awesome, its way underrated. Hardly anybody using it for some reason and its way ahead of anything running mach software. So glad i went this way! Also I had no experiance with any computer programming and after watching a few youtube and online tutorials i did the c programming for the whole toolchange cycle fairly easily. Not that big a deal if you put some time into it.

    Heres some pics of my control box now. This is fully retrofitted machine, toolchanger and everything working as it should. Also added a Mazak MPG for setting up machine and squaring up blocks. And with all this the control cabinet is far less cluttered then stock.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Prefered VMC Controllers-20170323_110408-jpg   Prefered VMC Controllers-20170323_110418-jpg  


  3. #23

    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Great Job mmurray70 on your retrofit. A lot of people do not realize how fantastically simple and easy to rebuild a fadal is (if you can rebuild a Chevy 350, you can easily rebuild a Fadal) heres a great example of a cool guy with zero cnc machine experience rebuilt a Fadal, and made a successful business using it. Took a Fadal from the junkyard and breathed new life into it. Check this out Gough the Knife maker and his Fadal Rebuild

    Just think when Fadal designed the control architecture the layout back in the 70's. People asked what are all these extra slots, relays, circuits, input connectors, etc. used for? (at the time they were just there for nothing) Fadals answer to that question was "The Future"



  4. #24
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    [QUOTE=mmurray70;2021988]Fadals are great machines to retrofit. I have a 94 Fadal 4020 running off Kflop and Kanalog control and its working great. The Fadal relay/fuse boards are super easy to connect too as well. I just connected a cheap ribbon cable breakout board and that allows me to control all the outputs of the machine like drawbar, high/low range, all the toolchanger outputs, two coolants, spindle on/off and reverse etc. And theres a bunch of spair slots in the fadal boards for more solid state relays if you want to add more things. Was almost too easy.

    The Dynomotion setup is awesome, its way underrated. Hardly anybody using it for some reason and its way ahead of anything running mach software. So glad i went this way! Also I had no experiance with any computer programming and after watching a few youtube and online tutorials i did the c programming for the whole toolchange cycle fairly easily. Not that big a deal if you put some time into it.

    /QUOTE]

    mmurray70, The dynamotion setup will definitely be in any future changes to my Fadal

    pete


  5. #25
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by slowtwitch View Post

    mmurray70, The dynamotion setup will definitely be in any future changes to my Fadal
    Yeah for sure, you cant go wrong with it.

    If you go through with it down the road send me a PM, I made some notes along the way that would save you some time. I can tell you what each pin on that breakout board controls etc. Save you hours or days of tracing each circuit.



  6. #26
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by rodney247 View Post
    Great Job mmurray70 on your retrofit. A lot of people do not realize how fantastically simple and easy to rebuild a fadal is (if you can rebuild a Chevy 350, you can easily rebuild a Fadal) heres a great example of a cool guy with zero cnc machine experience rebuilt a Fadal, and made a successful business using it. Took a Fadal from the junkyard and breathed new life into it. Check this out Gough the Knife maker and his Fadal Rebuild

    Just think when Fadal designed the control architecture the layout back in the 70's. People asked what are all these extra slots, relays, circuits, input connectors, etc. used for? (at the time they were just there for nothing) Fadals answer to that question was "The Future"
    I really appreciate all the info, seriously, it looks awesome.. But it's a good bit over my head. In currently running two Tormach mills, they are like one HP. 110ipm rapids, just to give you an idea, but the controllers are running a system called pathpilot, id's based off of LinuxCNC. I love it, it's really nice graphically, that's lots of conversational that's was really handy whole I was leaning, but I don't need that anymore. If I could have anything it would be a 4020 running pathpilot, but everyone I've talked to says it's bs, you can't run a real mill with it, pathpilot is the newest version of mach3, (which I know ppl run on real vms's)
    Anyways, what I'm getting from the hour or two of reading about dynomotion, kflop, is that it totally replaces the Fadal controller, is that right? For $250ish bucks? Seems to good to be true, I gotta be missing something, right?

    One of my biggest concerns with going with an older machine is it's ability to handle long programs, I'm going to be doing a lot of 3D operations, I plan on having a hundred or so one square inch blocks on the table , same part, 100 times say, but they are very intricate, 3D parts, I'm concerned that the controller will not have the ability to "look ahead" or will have to freeze, pause and catch up, does that make sense?
    I'm going to be cutting aluminum primarily, but I'm also going to need to remove lots of material as fast as possible, can you guys tell me what kind of max cutting speeds the 4020 it's capable of, I know that's pretty broad, I just need to know it's capable of moving pretty fast, I see lots of different rapid speeds and max cutting speeds listed in for sale adds I've seen lately so I'm kinda leary .


    Thanks again guys, I really appreciate hearing from you guys who are actually doing what I'm trying to do. Thanks so much!

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk



  7. #27

    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Well the fadal was capable of doing 1000 bps in the 1990's so depending the version on the fadal it can still be relevant running DNC (very large files) Mold making. Also fadal has progammable Gain control used when doing molds M90 - M94 i think. Anyways Check out drip feed control USBCNC-FAD-INT - Calmotion ...... they also do complete NEW cards that plug into existing motherboard 527F CNC Control - Calmotion Give them a call for what you could expect from the control you have with the USB box running DNCX



  8. #28
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by tbev View Post
    Anyways, what I'm getting from the hour or two of reading about dynomotion, kflop, is that it totally replaces the Fadal controller, is that right? For $250ish bucks? Seems to good to be true, I gotta be missing something, right?
    Its not quite that great a deal. You need the Kflop for sure, thats $250. And if you want to reuse your existing drives you need the Kanalog board for +/-10v control of drives, thats another $250. And if you want to use the toolchanger you will need a konnect board for extra inputs and outputs, so thats another $200. Were up to $700 now and you will certainly need several hundred dollars more for odds and ends and a pc. Probably safe to say your looking at $1000-$1500 and a fair bit of time to do it. But its a great system when its all done. And still far cheaper than industrial control packages. And its probably better, its so flexible, if i want to add or change anything to make it exactly how i want it, its easy to do it.

    Another thing i will mention. I bought my machine partly retrofitted already. It came with Kflop and Kanalog boards and the previous owner had the axes moving and spindle partly working. He added encoders to the servos to replace the resolvers and i believe there was a modification to the drives as well. I dont have much details on the modifications to the drives. I noticed the signal wire is soldered into the amplifier board in a different location, but i dont know if this was the only mod. Anyway just want you guys to know, if you have a DC machine like mine its not exactly plug and play even with the Kanalog board. Just keep this in mind.

    But on the bright side, once you get the axes moving things are much easier as i said earlier, all the rest of the machine outputs are super easy to connect to and control. So still a great machine to retrofit IMO.



  9. #29
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by rodney247 View Post
    Well the fadal was capable of doing 1000 bps in the 1990's so depending the version on the fadal it can still be relevant running DNC (very large files) Mold making. Also fadal has progammable Gain control used when doing molds M90 - M94 i think. Anyways Check out drip feed control USBCNC-FAD-INT - Calmotion ...... they also do complete NEW cards that plug into existing motherboard 527F CNC Control - Calmotion Give them a call for what you could expect from the control you have with the USB box running DNCX
    If the factory controller is working fine I can add the calmotion drip feed setup for five hundred bucks and that will allow me to run big long operations, like lots of high speed 3D machining ops? Am I understanding that correctly? Does this he'll the machine to be able to handle speeds and illustrations that would otherwise cause starvation?
    Do you know what the difference between that five finger dollar part and the whole $7K retrofit is? I'm assuming that is a while controller replacement that also replaces drives etc.. ?

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk



  10. #30
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by mmurray70 View Post
    Its not quite that great a deal. You need the Kflop for sure, thats $250. And if you want to reuse your existing drives you need the Kanalog board for +/-10v control of drives, thats another $250. And if you want to use the toolchanger you will need a konnect board for extra inputs and outputs, so thats another $200. Were up to $700 now and you will certainly need several hundred dollars more for odds and ends and a pc. Probably safe to say your looking at $1000-$1500 and a fair bit of time to do it. But its a great system when its all done. And still far cheaper than industrial control packages. And its probably better, its so flexible, if i want to add or change anything to make it exactly how i want it, its easy to do it.

    Another thing i will mention. I bought my machine partly retrofitted already. It came with Kflop and Kanalog boards and the previous owner had the axes moving and spindle partly working. He added encoders to the servos to replace the resolvers and i believe there was a modification to the drives as well. I dont have much details on the modifications to the drives. I noticed the signal wire is soldered into the amplifier board in a different location, but i dont know if this was the only mod. Anyway just want you guys to know, if you have a DC machine like mine its not exactly plug and play even with the Kanalog board. Just keep this in mind.

    But on the bright side, once you get the axes moving things are much easier as i said earlier, all the rest of the machine outputs are super easy to connect to and control. So still a great machine to retrofit IMO.
    That sounds like a great option but I'm not in a position to have that much time to figure out how to get all the bugs worked out. Is there anyone who I could pay to set that up for me?... Not usually the way I like to go but I need to get parts out, I plan on running this machine 18hr/day at least and it sounds like the possibility of a lot of time spent getting going is pretty great. If I'm understanding this right it's going to be a much more capable machine with this setup, vs the factory controller so I'm seriously considering this option. Where did your learn about it?

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk



  11. #31

    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    here is the results from going from the -5 system in fadal to the calmotion upgrade....part cut at 250 ipm. From there website http://www.calmotion.com/files/Merce...comparison.pdf



  12. #32
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Theres a lot of info on the dynomotion forum here on cnczone and the dynomotion yahoo group, and also the dynomotion website has a ton of info too. This type of retrofit is probably best for someone willing to put the time into it themselves, would probably cost a fortune to have someone else do it. Also would not be easy to do on a machine that your depending on for production now. Takes alot of time, not something you could start on a weekend and expect to be making parts again monday morning.



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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by rodney247 View Post
    here is the results from going from the -5 system in fadal to the calmotion upgrade....part cut at 250 ipm. From there website http://www.calmotion.com/files/Merce...comparison.pdf
    Wow what a difference, I would love to see parts comparisons from 4020 vs vf3 in different year ranges, I'm dying to find out how the Fadal, which is what I'm leaning towards now, is going to be able to handle 3D Adaptive, hsm pps, I want to run like 18 of the same part in the table, add many add I can fit, they are not super intricate parts but I'm super scared about data starving issues now, especially with multiple wsc's and adaptive paths. Here's a post I want to fill the table with, I do thousands of these and a run of a thousand takes a long time on a Tormach.
    But I also want to do a hundred or so of these at a time.


    Thoughts¿


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  14. #34

    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Well we have parts running on a Fadal 5020A (Great Machine Linear X and Y... Boxway Z) very accurate. With a Fadal -5 system love it. We had a job we were running at 100ipm cutting (programmer said that was as fast as he could get it to go without gouging). Then the same job on a 6030 with the Calmotion upgrade he could run at 200ipm an had no gouging of the part. Fadal 4020A or 5020A very reliable machines kinda hard to find, but very accurate 1100 ipm rapids. No gibs or turcite on the X and Y. Big Plus. And some of them have the 10,000rpm but i dont think its real necessary. older vf3's are i think 7500 or 8000, but not as much power of a Fadal 7500 rpm Vector Wye/Delta drive . If your in Cali stop by Calmotion or www.IndexDesignsCNC.com (rotaries) same building.



  15. #35
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by rodney247 View Post
    Well we have parts running on a Fadal 5020A (Great Machine Linear X and Y... Boxway Z) very accurate. With a Fadal -5 system love it. We had a job we were running at 100ipm cutting (programmer said that was as fast as he could get it to go without gouging). Then the same job on a 6030 with the Calmotion upgrade he could run at 200ipm an had no gouging of the part. Fadal 4020A or 5020A very reliable machines kinda hard to find, but very accurate 1100 ipm rapids. No gibs or turcite on the X and Y. Big Plus. And some of them have the 10,000rpm but i dont think its real necessary. older vf3's are i think 7500 or 8000, but not as much power of a Fadal 7500 rpm Vector Wye/Delta drive . If your in Cali stop by Calmotion or www.IndexDesignsCNC.com (rotaries) same building.
    Do you have the calmotion interface that's like $500.00, or the whole retrofit (I think $7k)? What components are upgraded? Everything else is factory Fadal? Some of the 4020s I've seen have noted turcite on some for sale ads, but I don't know how to tell which ones have that and which ones don't. Thanks so much, this is exactly why I'm trying to figure out.

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    Last edited by tbev; 03-25-2017 at 03:51 PM.


  16. #36

    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Machines that are 100% Box ways with Turcite and Gibs are the VMC20, 40, 2216, 3016, 4020, 6030 and 8030. The 100% Linear machines (like Haas) are the VMC15, 15XT, 2216L, 3016L ( the difference between the 15 and 15XT compared to the 2216L and 3016L is that the 15 and 15XT are a Weldment Steel construction and the 2216L and 3016L are CastIron construction) Base, Saddle and Column. And then there is the 4020A and the 5020A which are combination Linear guides on the X and Y with Box Ways on the Z axis, all Cast Iron Construction. If you buy a Fadal make sure it is running the -5 system (sometimes you get lucky and the machine will have the Memory expansion which can be up to 16megabites and will hold some pretty substantial size files). And then if you want to upgrade the control with Calmotion you can. It is a swap of all the Cards in the Mother Board card rack, but uses the existing other components. Takes about 15-30 minutes to put them in. No major work. And if you had to go back to the -5 system you could as back-up. The $500 interface is used for file transfer with the existing control. Inputing and dwnloading, and for Large files running with the DNCX like mold files. The New control can send and receive files through the WiFi. Best to call them they would answer any questions you would have. they definitely would be able to give you a better idea of what to expect. And the ease of installation.



  17. #37
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    Default Re: Prefered VMC Controllers

    Quote Originally Posted by rodney247 View Post
    Machines that are 100% Box ways with Turcite and Gibs are the VMC20, 40, 2216, 3016, 4020, 6030 and 8030. The 100% Linear machines (like Haas) are the VMC15, 15XT, 2216L, 3016L ( the difference between the 15 and 15XT compared to the 2216L and 3016L is that the 15 and 15XT are a Weldment Steel construction and the 2216L and 3016L are CastIron construction) Base, Saddle and Column. And then there is the 4020A and the 5020A which are combination Linear guides on the X and Y with Box Ways on the Z axis, all Cast Iron Construction. If you buy a Fadal make sure it is running the -5 system (sometimes you get lucky and the machine will have the Memory expansion which can be up to 16megabites and will hold some pretty substantial size files). And then if you want to upgrade the control with Calmotion you can. It is a swap of all the Cards in the Mother Board card rack, but uses the existing other components. Takes about 15-30 minutes to put them in. No major work. And if you had to go back to the -5 system you could as back-up. The $500 interface is used for file transfer with the existing control. Inputing and dwnloading, and for Large files running with the DNCX like mold files. The New control can send and receive files through the WiFi. Best to call them they would answer any questions you would have. they definitely would be able to give you a better idea of what to expect. And the ease of installation.
    Thanks buddy, you rock!

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk



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