Advice from Fadal owners, for a (hopefully) new Fadal owner

[building it all]

I'm contemplating buying a used Fadal VMC from Machinery Exchange. I will be installing it in my garage using a phase converter. I will be using it for prototyping, as well as whatever jobs I can get for it. The Fadal machines I am considering, one is from 1987, the other one is from 1991. The main question is will this machine serve me well? Are there signs of wear that I should lookout for? Should I just consider buying a much newer machine? I am also considering the Haas that they have, which is newer. Any advice would be appreciated. I have no one to ask.
Thanks!
Jeff
Van Nuys, CA

[scadvice]

Well you've opened up the can -o- worms again! A lot of discussion has come across this forum about this subject. And the Fadal vs Haas subject.
Here is what I suggest, go to the Fadal and Haas forums and read (with an open mind) all that is written. This will help to give you a bases for your decision on which machine to get.
Personally I like both with a little lean toward the Fadals. Why? (you ask) because I have owned two of them. A 3 axis VMC 40 1989 and a 1997 Vmc 15XTHS 4 axis. I have worked on Haas lathes and mills. Biggest to the smallest.
I lean toward the Fadal not because I think it is a better machine than the Haas, but because I know the machine better mechanically than the Haas. Also the last one was a great buy for me. You will see a lot of info on problems and fixing them on the forums. Maybe it's similar on the Haas sites, I don't know, as I'm not reading those much.
Anyway there are a few tech's on the sites that give good free advice. Check out a guy named NEAL on the Fadal site. Other may tell of someone to watch for on the Haas site.
If you decide on the Fadal... I would suggest not using a phase generator but getting a 220 single phase transformer, if one is available for the machine you get. That is my thought anyway. Also if you are thinking of getting a VMC 15 I have a 220 single phase transformer for one that I'm going to sell. I have 3 phase power now and bought it used and never used it when I thought I would be using single phase.
One last thing... if you buy from a dealer make him give you some kind of support and warranty, if they won't you might as will buy one off e-bay for a much cheaper price. I would even make him put a single phase transformer in or setup a phase gen for you. Even at an extra cost, I think it would worth it. Others could disagree with me here... grin.
Steve

[building it all]

Ok, Worms all over!!! Thanks for answering my post!!!
I was leaning the other way because the controller for the haas looks a little more up to date. But I do like the Fadal. Do you have any feelings on buying a used machine? I am good with finding and changing parts on any kind of machine. I wonder will the ways or the ball screws be out of wack from unknown usage? I live close to machinery exchange the store on ebay, so I was looking at buying a machine from them, also the fadal factory is right down the street from them. What kind of performance do you think I can reasonably expect from a vmc 15 that is 15 years old? I will not be doing much production work, and will maintain the machine well. Do you think this would be a good deal for me? They are asking $15,000 for it I could probably get it delivered and installed for that price, I'd guess.
Jeff

[scadvice]

...It depends on the machine and how it was taken care of, I would think. VMC 15's are the low cost version of a Fadal and are well suited for the home shop. As I said I have a '97' VMC 15 XTHS myself (XT stands for extended travel and HS... high speed processor). It seems fine. The CNC 88 control is easy to learn and use. It's a little limited on memory but that is fixable a lot of ways. If they are asking 15k it wouldn't hurt to offer less (15% less maybe) or at least free shipping and setup.
Make them run it for you. Shift it. Tool change it. I would suggest have them program a little routine in it that moves all axis, changes the spindle speeds up and down with shifting from Hi to low range, tool changing, rapid and feed moves.
I would expect some things to be worn, but you may get lucky. I'm not fond of the older Haas's... 95 or older. They had some issues, in my opinion. I also question the newer Fadals (MAC I think they are called) ,but I have nothing but hearsay to back that statement.
If you need a program, I'm sure I or someone here can work one up for you, if they agree to a test. It would be a good learning thing for you to go down and input it. Let them xyz zero it.
Steve

[carbidecraters]

I think you would be miles ahead finding a late 93 on up fadal 3016 at a minimum. What price range are you dealing with and where are you located?

[building it all]

I think you would be miles ahead finding a late 93 on up fadal 3016 at a minimum. What price range are you dealing with and where are you located?

I think I will try to get the newest machine that I can afford. I'm going to finance, but I think between 20 and 30 is my price range.

[carbidecraters]

Heck you can get a great machine for around 20K!

[little bubba]

I don't know a damn thing about Haas, but I can give some insight on Fadals. Brought in a used one where I used to work, and now out on my own, my first "real" machine was a Fadal, a '93 4020, for good reason.

The shop I ran previously, we had Mazak's and that one Fadal. I loved the Mazaks, they were drop dead realiable and fast and accurate, but when they broke and it wasn't often, it was usually big dollars, $13k for a spindle.

The Fadal, it was a '97 4020, it had its problems, a few crashes from crappy operators blew a few driver boards over the years. Normal maintainance stuff like Bellevilles, had some wires in the flex going to the X and 4th axis, burnt up a few chiller pumps, thrust bearings. However over 4 years all the repairs on that one machine didn't add up to the cost of one Mazak spindle.

So when it came time to pony up for my own first real machine (an Acroloc isn't a real machine). Between me and my partner, it was going to be Fadal. First, the amount of real estate for the money, you can't beat it. I was looking at boxway machines, so thats good too. The control, I was looking for an 88HS, so '93 and up, is just stupid easy to use. Parts are cheap, with companies other than Fadal dealing in them, CNCpros, and UptimeCNC are two I've bought from recently. They are easy to work on.

When you get a used one, there are things I would go through and check and replace. No matter what, new Bellevilles and drawbar floater, run you about $75. Good tool retention is important and both used machines I've dealt with came with 16 and 22 of the 42 washers shattered, NOT good for tool retention.

Check the endplay on the ballscrews, the thrust bearings can go to hell quick, especially with the cooled ballscrews(un-plumb those, its just trouble waiting to happen). About $85 an axis for bearings. Check the motor to ballscrew couplers, they are only held on with a single 1/4-20 setscrew pushing down on a key. I pulled mine and added two 3/8-16 set screws while leaving the 1/4-20 to push down on the keyway, also ground flats on the end of the ballscrew and the motorshaft.

Take the time (box machine) to go through the manual and make all the proper Gib adjustments, its a pain in the ass, but worth it. I had to replace some of the gibs, they were the old style steel with turcite and they had become delaminated, the bronze ones are only $40 each, so not a big hit $$$ wise.

Check your oil lines, if anything looks suspect, change it, you can buy enough nylon line and fittings to do the whole machine for about $50. I've only replaced what was damaged. Also, oil injectors, there are about 20 of them on the machine and at $24 on sale a piece, that can get pricy. I pulled them all and threw them into an ultrasonic cleaner ($40 at Horrible Freight) used hydraulic oil as the cleaning fluid, and tested them by running each injector straight off the waylube pump. I had to buy 3 new ones.

So for around a $1000 and some TLC, its not that hard to end up with a machine that is going to perform almost as new. I didn't do all of this at once, and I should have, but I had chips to make. I'm back to near the factory backlash settings on a machine that can get its drivers license next year. Its paid for itself 7 times in 9 months, not bad.

Downsides of the machine, its not really fast, toolchanges are insanely slow, rapids kind of suck. I wouldn't use it to contour a mold at 500ipm. Upsides are that is cheap, easy to fix, fairly reliable, lots of support, quite rigid when taken care of (those damn bellevilles).

On the phase converters, they are a pain in the ass, they make noise, they aren't cheap, and they break. If you can get your hands on a single phase transformer, and don't see 3 phase coming your way anytime soon, go that route.

I actually like the Fadals so much, I've got another one coming next week.

[scadvice]

Another nice post with lots of good info for all of us used Fadal users.
Steve

[Delw]

Personally I wouldnt buy a machine from any shop that was 95 or older as your going to have tons of hours on them. Fadals are great machines and if you get a good one you will love it, if you get bad one you will hate it until you start comparing prices with the same items on different brands.
Fadal parts are everywhere, there manuals make it so ANYONE can fix them, there Tech support at fadal is great ( I never had any problems).


now about the controls, this always had me cuious of why people are always bagging on controls. Most machine shops have a cad cam system so the control is really not a big issue in the way I see it.

I have owned Hitachi seiki Acrolocs (4th axis) fadals(4th axis) Supermax's and omniturns, there is not one job I can't do on any of those machines. Barring needing a 5th axis, but for 3axis compared to 3 axis 4 axis compared 4th axis etc.

I have ran pretty much everything control wise, the only thing I use the controls for is start and stop and on ocassion to adust feeds and speeds
On my mills I put in a program and hit the button thats pretty much it, never had an issue.
on my acrolocs I would set it up for dnc walk into the office and and hit the pc button to send program, I would stay in there until the program was done running. I never checked it while it was running as there was no need to.

A good programmer and lots of machining experiance can make is so all you need to do is hit stop and start including first run set-ups. maybe run and occasional optional stop.

[little bubba]

now about the controls, this always had me cuious of why people are always bagging on controls. Most machine shops have a cad cam system so the control is really not a big issue in the way I see it.

On the control, its easy to navigate around and has some great utilities in it, program wise cad and go, no big deal, though I do like the E#s as opposed to the G56.2 stuff.

Utilities I like, setting tool heights, which I do often, no probe, and low run quantities with constantly changing tools, so I can't always rely on a bank of tools in the machine.

Setting fixture offsets, again, no probe here either. The utilities are fantastic, it takes your edgefinder into account so no errors in adding or subtracting, 3 point circles(pick up the center of an arc also), center of a part, and the really cool one that I like, it will pick up a corner in any orientation at any angle with 4 points, and again, it takes you edgefinder into account, no math, no trig no nothing. Just handy and easy.

Its got some neat canned cycles in it, real simple engraving if you are handcoding, serializing parts, thats a neat feature that I haven't taken advantage of yet, the 4th axis wrap is handy if you only have a 2.5D cam system.

The menu driven part of it is nice, makes it really easy to get somebody up and running on the machine setting it up. Somebody that has a clue, but doesn't know the machine only needs to know to hit the spacebar and walk through the menus, find what you want to do and then it pretty much walks you through it.

So I do find the control to be a big plus for Fadal, the 6M I've got here on an acroloc, which doesn't get used much is just so much more of a pain to get set up. Turning knobs and pushing buttons all over the damn place, not a control I would be comfortable letting a new guy set up tools and pick up zeros on.

[Delw]

Now you make a good point about controls, the canned cycles. I can understand that part. I used to use canned cycles all the time and they were nice for lathes when we needed to run a series of parts that were close to the same configuration. like uinstead of 50 lines of roughing you had 3.

On mills I got lots of memory so I don't use canned cycles and the ones I do use(peck drilling, spot drilling etc) I have in my machine file on my cad cam software.


The fadal on setting tools for me is really easy. I use mainly vice's so I set the tool height for all my tools at the vice jaws height, then I set my E numbers for the amount of stock the part is to make the top of the part 0. the only number I change when running a different part is the Z height on the "E" number to the size of the part. for example if the part I get is 2.010 tall I set the "E" number to 2.010.

when I have to use the table( not very often) I use a sub plate cause setting tools off the fadal table is next to impossible due to the finish. use the same deal with "E" offsets.


those acro's are interesting and fun arent they LOL. I been running them since the very first ones. used the old controls in the 5 foot tall box, mx1's, fanuc seimens fagor and all the controls on them, the series 100 and 1000 were the best heavy cutting machines on the market. I loved them for incol tit, and other high nickle alloys. there are very few machines that can run hard cutting metals fast with big cuts that would keep up with a acroloc.
I still miss the 20 lb tool holders coming loose ate 6500 rpms and spinning like a top inside and sometimes outside of the machine, always made the day interesting.