May be moving to a Fadal Shop

[lkenney]

We are thinking about buying a small machine shop near ours, we are a haas shop now but this shop is all Fadal, a mix of machines from an old 15 to a new 4020. Most of the machines have the 88 control except the 4020 that has a Fanuc 18i control. We will combine the shops at one location. What do i need to know to make the jump to the Fadal Controls?

Thanks
lkenney

[scadvice]

... Fadal has two methods of programming. Format 1 and Format 2. One is Fadals own system which includes a lot of canned cycles.And the other is Fanuc standard. Looking at the codes of Haas and Fadal side by side, you will easily see the differences. i.e. Haas & Fanuc M30 end of program...Fadal uses M30 as end of all subroutines. I just always use M02 in my CAM post so as not to make a mistake. G54, 55, ect. are there, but also E1, 2, 3 ect they mean exactly the same thing and are interchangeable in use.

The rest of the difference are normal machine setup stuff. Scan the Fadal forums here when you have time, there are a number of start up questions and answers there that will give you a heads up. You also will get a lot of heads up to repair and maintenance issues you may see.

Go to www.fadalcnc.com/fadal_Tech_Docs1.htm On this site you can find free down loads for all the programming doc's for the Fadal machines.

I've programmed both of the machines starting with the Fadal and then years later the Haas machines. My first day was a little slow (being cautious) but after that no problem. Fadal has a tool setting routine you will like, worth learning. I know nothing about the Fadals with fanuc controls.

Steve

[lkenney]

Steve,

Thank you for the encouragement and the link.

Lkenney

[Switcher]

scadvice,

Thanks for the link.

Does Fadal run Siemens Control? I found a few Siemens Manuals in that link, I already have 2 of the manuals they listed, I'll have to look thru the rest.

I've never ran Fadal machines, but I have ran a bunch of machines that have the Siemens 840D control.


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[little bubba]

Originally Posted by lkenney We are thinking about buying a small machine shop near ours, we are a haas shop now but this shop is all Fadal, a mix of machines from an old 15 to a new 4020. Most of the machines have the 88 control except the 4020 that has a Fanuc 18i control. We will combine the shops at one location. What do i need to know to make the jump to the Fadal Controls? Thanks lkenney

I've seen a few people that came from other controls and when introduced to the Fadal 88hs, loved 'em. My business partner had worked with Fanuc, Bandit, Seimens and Fagor controls, and whatever Mach 3 is considered. He loves the Fadal's.

The 88hs is, from all the stuff I've messed with, insanely easy to navigate and use. It has some great utilities for finding your fixture offsets, and as Scadvice said, if they don't have tool length probes, the utility for setting tool heights is great. It might take you an hour to get up to speed tinkering by yourself, if somebody shows you, maybe 15 minutes to be making chips. Its really that easy.

As he also said, Format 2 is Fanuc-ese. It will accept some other things(the E#s instead of the G5x's, which I really like), and doesn't need others, such as a G43 when calling out your H#. The whole insanely confusing(to me at least) G28 thing is simply replaced by G0H0Z0, which simply means go to Z0 using height offset 0, which should be your toolchange position, but it will take G28s also.

The parameters are stupid simple too. No trying to figure out what the 14th bit in parameter 834593 does. 3 simple pages, written in english.

Rigid tap (0, no / 1, yes) <---- it says that, how much easier can you get.

You don't have to deal with turning on options crap, once you install the hardware to do it, you turn it on. Everything else is on.

It also has some neat canned cycles that you may or may not take advantage of. The text routine would be handy if you were hand coding, but probably not needed. The serializing routine is pretty neat, I'll give a more informed opinion if I ever try it. 4th axis wrapping is nice, and can take complex rotary work and make it a simple 2.5D piece of cake. These are all ON, you don't need to take the tech out to dinner and get him a hooker to figure out which parameter to change.

The machines themselves, they are not high end jap machines, they are in the same class as the Haas's you are working with. The difference is that Fadal has aftermarket support by at least 3 different companies, that makes the parts damn cheap, and they are insanely easy to diagnose and fix. If maintained and tweaked properly, they can use every little bit of their HP, and be very accurate. Another bonus is that the basic machine really didn't change much from the mid 80's up into the 2000's, so there is always somebody here or another message board that knows how to fix it.

As for worrying about the machines maybe being older, I bought a '93 and a '94 last year, never batted an eyelash or lost a bit of sleep worrying about condition. A few maintenance items, a few hours with an indicator. No quadrant marks, accurate and can take some serious cuts.

I wouldn't worry in the slightest.

[billystein]

I find the haas control easy enough to operate and setup. it seems to have any option you could want. programs like a fanuc. and on a new machine runs circles around my fadal as far as tool change time and the fast rapid.
I realize the fadal is not the strongest built machine by far. that being the case I think the fadal control is my favorite of all that I have used. for some strange reason it just seems so fast and easy to indicate something or kiss a couple of thou off the top if a fixture. the tool settings is a real time saver. once you have your post set to output perfect programs it can be loaded or run dnc. I keep a computer connected only for loading programs or dnc.
one feature that really sucked is the usb connection. I only used one on the newer fadal control. it used a cable from the back of the pendant to the rs232 port. then you used the old fadal software to load the program. that means running windows on your fadal conrol to load the program with the rs232 connection. when you are done and go back to cnc mode windows is running in the background and now your control is not as responsive so you start missing keystrokes. what a nightmare.
on the haas you just plug in the usb drive and read it to the memory. it takes about 2 seconds.

[lkenney]

Thanks everyone