FADALs hate-ers :)

[Konstrukter1]

I got 2004 3016 FADAL. Its run great. Parts i make on it are good. Tool life is good.
Ok, its not a HSM machine, but also Haas, daewoo,... isnt.
Friend got VF3 Haas and he make very bad parts (bad finish, marks,...), and i would like to say: its not the machine, its operator to blame.

Whay you hate FADAL? Dont like the color? just like my girlfriend. If the car isnt pink....its a bad car.

[carbidecraters]

Uh oh...can of worms

[joesz]

I am new here and just looking through the posts and happened to come across this one it looks like there may have been some heated discussion about this in the past. Just to put my two cents in I own 3 fadels and have had one of them for almost 10 years. I do everything from high volume production to complex close tolerence prototypes I love these machines they have been very good for us. They are as accurate as any machine in this class and more reliable that some of the others out there. I was just wondering what your bad experiances were with these machines. Other that repairs being very costly which is true for any CNC machine I have no complaints my largest repair bill so far was a spindle inverter at around 6k but that was on the ten year old machine. Other than that my repairs have been few and far between and not anywhere near that 6k repair.

[airforce1]

in the air force it seems every base has a 4020. most of my experience is with them, some of the experiece is good and some bad.
now they could use some more feature i guess but i like the simplicity of the controler.
the one i currently work with has random baud rate failures on the disk drive, random "c-axis faults" and random spindle driver faults, the spindal tachometer stops working, all kinds of goofy stuff, and it never works before lunch. i know that makes no sence but it some times doesn't boot at all, just shows the fadal logo. if it does start the spindal may stop while a program is running giving either the c-axis fault or a spindal driver error.

this machine was built in 03 delivered in 04 and we finally got the squadron to pay to get the tooling in 07, we still lack cad/cam software.

i've heard horror stories about others that make this one look mint

but i must say i had none of these problems with the last one i worked with.
that one was 5 axis and was buit in the early 90's though it wasn't perfect, the monitor barely worked, and it had the occasional axis faults, do to some miss matched drivers installed when it was upgraded to 5 axis according to the repair guy. other than that i had an arbor get soo wedged into the spindle when cutting titanium that the machine failed to eject it, it failed to recognise that the arbor was still in the spindle raised the z pulling it through the atc and droped it on another tool bending the shaft to the atc. so yea i have mixed feelings about fadal.

[nervis1]

Guys, please avoid getting personal. It's fine to discuss what you like or don't like about Fadal, we just do not want this to degenerate into an argument.

Thank you.

Dave

[joesz]

I was just wondering what kinds of problems you have experianced, I guess it is different for everyone. I have worked with a lot of different makes and models of CNC equipment and from my experiance anyway the Fadel is as reliable as any and that includes a very high end Okuma one of my customers owns, talk about expensive repairs I am glad I do not own one of those.
I think a lot of it is personal preference too I have seen guys so used to one machine that they claim every other brand is junk. I have had salesman go from one brand to another and claim the same thing. I have the 32mp control with Gibbs loaded in all 3 and I love the control.
I do not want to start any kind of shouting match here I have seen how that can happen I was just asking since my experiance has been nothing but good, maybe I am just very lucky. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut too I will probably have these things start falling apart on me now.

[fpworks]

I just got rid of my Fadal, but not because I hated it, and I never had any problems with it.

It just isn't geared toward regular production work. Too slow. A 15k spindle won't fix it either, because the control couldn't keep up. And the toolchanger, axis acceleration, rapid moves, thermal displacement, spindle rigidity, retention force, etc...

Anyhow, it is going out the door to make room for another Mazak.

But don't get me wrong, the Fadal was always my first choice for any short run or prototype work. The control is simple and the machine is easy to set up. It is what it is.

[ghyman]

Why?
On a brand-new 2216fx
1. Spindle
2. Through spindle coolant
3. Tool changer
4. Probing
5. Tool carousel
6. Service
7. Responsiveness of support network

I think those are the big-hitters from the past 5 months.

[ltmquik]

Why?
On a brand-new 2216fx
1. Spindle
2. Through spindle coolant
3. Tool changer
4. Probing
5. Tool carousel
6. Service
7. Responsiveness of support network

I think those are the big-hitters from the past 5 months.

Yeah,
And the time and money that was lost due to down time. I am guessing you purchased a new machine because you had work to do not provide R&D for a relativly large machine tool manufacurer. We were in the same situation. It will take years to recoup the efforts we lost not to mention our credibility with our customers. It is a good thing our new machines are 5%-8% faster.

[Konstrukter1]

Seems that 32MP was the last Fadals that run ok.
New Fadals....... Story about smaler bearing is somehow funny, coolpower..... give me a break. Without .....not good.

[ghyman]

"...credibility with our customers."

Thanks. I forgot about #8 on my list.
It's sad when we are outsourcing work from an old production mill, because we're using the old production mill to run the parts that we wanted to make on the Fadal 4-5 months ago!

[Mike Stevenson]

Fadal's are great machines.