Fadal VMC Setup Questions


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    Question Fadal VMC Setup Questions

    I just installed a used VMC40 with the 88HS control. I've also got a Bridgeport clone with conversational and am comfortable and fairly quick at setting it up. I've just gotten the VMC running and fought my way through the initial steps for power up and tool loading (I've got all the manuals but they're almost useless).

    I'm baffled as to how you set the origins (X, Y, Z) for a part. In my mill I use a "wiggler" in the chuck to set X and Y and just touch the tool to the part for Z but I can't find anything in the Fadal literature that addresses that. It's also not clear how to measure tool length/offset.

    Also, is it necessary to home the X, Y and Z axis and do a CS each time you power up? Every time I power up I have to go through that routine.

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    Ok if you send the machine home for power off before you turn it off then it should be lined up at the cold start marks when you turn it back on. And yes you have to cold start every time you turn the machine on, it won't do anything until that is done.

    If you want to set a new home position jog the x and y where you want it then type setho at the command line. I've never moved the z so I am not sure if that would screw with the tool change or not.

    You put your fixture offset in the offset page. If you go to where you can put in the tool offsets and press the space bar it will change to the fixture offsets page. Not sure how you have your programs set up but where I work we have tool setters to measure the tool lengths and put that in the tool offsets. Your fixture offset will come from your origin set in your program.

    Hope this helps if not or if something is not clear I will try to explain better.



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    With a tool in the spindle, jog the head 1.0 above the part and type SL,1
    do that with all the tools; sl,2;sl,3; and so. Type DT and see the tool table.
    Yes you can use de Edge Finder on x&y.
    And every timae you power up, make shure all 3 axes are sitting on the cs
    marks, wich are the Machine Home. You can set your program hone any where but Z axis should be at machine home.



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    Smile Thanks

    Thanks guys.

    Obviously I'm spoiled by the coversational programming on my mill. It's going to take me a while to get up to speed on this machine..and a lot more questions. That's the great thing about this forum. Once I get through the startup/setup basics I'll really be pulling my hair out from the programming aspect.

    On the subject of "downloading" programs is there an easy way to implement a USB input or am I stuck with the RS232 input?



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    hooking up a usb port is very simple ($1000.00) I guess



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    Angry Major Issue!

    1. When I enter TC,1 the head comes down and hits the tool holder turret pushing it down about an inch (I presume this is what they refer to as "tool changer crash"). It took me a while to get the Z-axis to go up and the tool holder to go home. Then I set all the axis at home, hit HO and I get an error. When I hit manual I get a "waiting" and Tool 10 in spindle (there are no tools loaded at this time).

    I decided to test the every-axis-is-home and turn power off. When I did that Z-axis dropped to bottom and now won't go all the way home.



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    If you can jog the head up at all, go as far as it will go and the issue a CS command. Again jog the Z up as far as it will go and issue another CS comand. Reapeat this process until you get the Z where it belongs. make sure all axes are at the index alignment marks and then issue a SETH command. This sets the home position at cold start. Rarely do you ever need to do a SETZ command.
    FYI-- When the ATC is a home position and you issue the TC,1 command, the ATC should move to the spindle first, the drawbar then releases the tool, and then the Z goes up 4.000" and everything comes to a stop. That is the normal sequence. To send everything back home press manual.
    The control never really knows if a tool is in the spindle or not. It keeps track of the turret indexes and tool changes and reports the result as what it believes is in the spindle.

    Neal



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    Talking

    Thanks Neal for your assistance.

    I came across a reference almost a year ago to the same problem I'm apparently having...the Z-axis assembly dropping. There is reference to a counterweight and counterweight bars. I've pored over all the parts lists and maintenance manual and can't find a thing. Can you or somebody educate me as to where I should look and what I should do to correct this situation.

    I want to thank you for your input, not only for my problems but for everybody else. It seems that you have helped many of us and you deserve kudos.



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    Neal I dotn think that advice is right. If he jogged the machine all the way up he would be 4" above CS position. What he should do is jog the Z up until he can see the axis marker on Z and be close to it (within .090) and then use the CS in the command mode.

    We have had good luck with our Fadals milling mostly soft steel and aluminum up to 5 axis. We are always looking for spare parts :) If you have a broken down Fadal give a shout.


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    Default Why the Z-axis drop???

    Neal/Carbidecrafters

    My more concerning question is whether there is any damage by the Z-axis dropping (it was a freefall as though there was almost no brake) and why won't it go up all the way? What caused it? What are the "counterweight bars" and where do I find them?



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    Neal, you're right, Carbide critters, he is right, if you CS where the CS position isn't, that's where it sets the zero(within a ballscrew revolution).

    What I'm really surprised at is that the 88HS probably has the best ever utilities for setting tool heights and fixture offsets, and nobody has mentioned them, since that is what the original question was about.

    My 2 cents, Rdoty, Fadal's run off of software limits. When you cold start, you need to be in the correct position, there are no limit switches to save your ass. The Z needs to be at tool change height and the X and Y midtravel. Your margin of error is 1/2 a ballscrew rotation each direction before you type CS. If you set it wrong, you can cause some major serious damage. There are marks, the X and Y are easy, the Z can be a little trickier to find.

    As for fixture offsets, my rule is NEVER EVER use a SETH or a SETY or a SETX and ESPECIALLY never ever use a SETZ. Leave the home position where it is (E0). At the end of the program run back to E0X0Y(1/2 your travel minus a bit)

    Now as far as all the commands people want you to type, you need to remember some, but not many. When you are at the <enter next command> line, hit the space bar, a wonderful menu pops up. Hit the space bar again and another pops up, hit it again and another pops up, hit it again, and you are back to <enter next command>.

    So, hit the space bar once, that nice little menu pops up, #4 will be set fixture, so hit #4, another menu pops up, pick #1(fixture #) pick your #, they correspond to your E#, then if you like your edgefinder, it asks you what diameter it is, enter that, then it asks what RPM you want to run it at, enter that, and then it TELLS you to hit start to set RPM, then it sends you back to the nice menu.

    Now you are going to hit #2, Jog around or something, pickup an edge, if you look at the screen it will say hit <manual> to exit, so, once you pick up the edge, hit <manual>, then hit #3(set offset or something). It will ask you what axis, pick your axis, then it will ask you +-or 0, since you are using an edgefinder, pick what side of the axis you are on plus or minus, it does the calculation for you. Tells you to hit manual to exit, back to the pretty menu, hit #2 again, repeat for Y. There are some other nice utilities in that menu also.

    For tool heights, you will need to hit the space bar 3 times to get to the third menu. Hit #2 <setup>, <tool>, <multiple>, then follow the directions, example ... tools 1-5 with a 1" height block, changes the tools and does the calculations for you, its about as easy and quick as you can get.

    Back to the SETH, SETX,Y&Z, if you just don't touch those or use those, it leaves your home position at your Cold Start position, and remember that all of your fixture offsets are based off of you HOME position, move the home position with any one of those commands, and you lose all of your offsets. A SETZ can really screw you, had a machine with a nice mark from a 4" facemill rapiding straight into the table. Anyways, leave the home at CS and then when you want to shut down, hit the space bar once, that nice menu comes up again, hit #3<return to home, or something close>, hit <start> it returns home, shut it down. Fire it up in the morning, just type CS and fly.

    Its a beautiful controller as far as ease goes, it TELLS you what to do, just page through the menus to find what you need to do, and it walks you through it.



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    Wink Great Tutorial

    Thanks Little Bubba. Now, why couldn't they put that in the manual? Think of all the trees it would have saved!

    I'll try all that in the morning. In the meantime I'm still concerned about the counterweight/counterweight-bar issue and if that has anything to do with the Z-axis dropping when I did a power down.



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    Nice tutorial there bubba, the only reason I never went in that depth is the way my company handles things. The home positions we use are usually y10 only, which make for easy loading, x and z stay at cs position. Also I've never used the set fixture or set tool commands we are told where the offsets come from we pick them up and enter what we get in the offset page. For tool lengths we use tool presetters to get our lengths and enter them in the offset page as well. Its kinda hard to tell someone the easy way to do things as most of the time the easy way to a person is what they are taught/learned, and most of the time there is always easier ways to do things as is the case with some of the things bubba brought up.



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    As a newbie / 2 year Fadal operator on an older machine.. you guys need to remember that Sys 96 and older does not have the same command / menu structure as Sys97 and newer.

    That enter next command prompt is not in Sys95 with the 1400-4 cards. OK, well , not on my 1993 VMC15 anyway. However, I did change the system board card to Sys97 and sure enough, there is that 4th screen with enter next command. its also in Sys101.3 which I have too.

    Also let me help make it clear about CS. I fought this issue. They are telling you about the TRAVEL with CS ( cold start ) ... If you have 20 inch of travel and you CS at 20 inch ( Z head on the table lets say ) , you cannot go UP but 10 inches. You are not going to make it to the ATC line up CS index mark. You have to except where it stops, and do CS again. Now, you can move to the ATC index mark and stop it there, do CS again.. now you are lined up with the correct position for ATC working correctly. Its the same however with X and Y .. if you have 20 inches of table, and you happen to CS at the far most edge, you are not going to make it to the other side of the table before it just stops jogging.. you have to CS again to fix this at the proper index marks.

    I ran a mill with limit switches and it did not have these CS / travel issues. All the parts of the Fadal are very software driven and encoder driven. It has those line up marks so the X Y Z all travel the correct distance you have set in parameters table. I have even over ridden the CS issue with travel by setting the X Y travel to something else in SETP, but this creates other issues if you dont know what to watch for. but it does allow you to work on a part just a bit out of your table area if you really really have to.

    Must be careful with how the machine starts and powers off. the menu with number 4 home axis, number 2 power off home axis is the most important at the end of the day so the start of the day is easy.

    The system upon startup will ask you if you want to return to the last 0 , 0 , 0 position. If you do not know what this position was, do not use it. If the CS is not been correct, it will drive the table to axis overload if it is out the parameters. On Sys95 it does not TELL how far it is going to move from CS to this 0 , 0 , 0 location. Sys 96 and above is nice enough to tell you how far it is going to move from CS to what the last Zero location was. Watch out for this.



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    Monkeywrench Technician DareBee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by little bubba View Post

    As for fixture offsets, my rule is NEVER EVER use a SETH or a SETY or a SETX and ESPECIALLY never ever use a SETZ. Leave the home position where it is (E0). At the end of the program run back to E0X0Y(1/2 your travel minus a bit)
    I agree with this very heartily, always use fixture offsets.
    Some of us (especially in format 2 or Fanuc lingo) call E0 = G53 and the fixture offsets are G54 to G??
    The only datum I ever adjust is SETA. A can not be over-run so it is the simplest setup method.

    Now as far as all the commands people want you to type, you need to remember some, but not many. When you are at the <enter next command> line, hit the space bar, a wonderful menu pops up. Hit the space bar again and another pops up, hit it again and another pops up, hit it again, and you are back to <enter next command>.
    This is not always true.
    The "Space bar menu" has to be enabled in the machine parameters. I didn't know that the space bar menu existed for my first few years of Fadal use. There is also 2 variations of the space bar menu available.
    Maybe this is specific to my software version, but this is how mine is.


    Now
    I understand that you have just received this machine - right?
    If it was properly prepared for shipping, the counterweight will have 2 bars through the casting holding it in position from moving. These bars will be through the casting, protruding just below where the TC arm bolts on.
    OTOH - if these bars were NOT used, the counterweight chain could have broken during shipping and the counterweight could be laying in the bottom doing nothing. Needless to say - this is bad.
    Either of these situations would allow the head to freefall.

    www.integratedmechanical.ca


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    Thumbs up One Problem Solved!

    ....and maybe several more.

    Thanks so much for the input. This morning I found out what the counterweight bars were and pulled them out. Then I put all the axis at home and did the CS. (One question, there was one long one and one short one...is that typical?)

    Bubba, et al , your comments about the machine being run off software limits sure cleared up a lot of my confusion. My engineering background plus my experience with my CNC mill has always related to limit switches so this whole homing and CS process went completely over my head (it's pretty shiny up there!)

    I'm sure I'll have a lot more questions as I progress along this path. Thanks again for all the help.



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    Quote Originally Posted by rdoty View Post
    ....and maybe several more.

    (One question, there was one long one and one short one...is that typical?)

    .
    Well... If it was me shipping it the bars would be however long the pieces I grab out of my short-rack happen to be.

    The CS system works really well. (until you put the motors back on in the wrong orientation). I like it.

    My lathe picks up on switches and rarely will it be within .002

    www.integratedmechanical.ca


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    Yes, that is typical. Try putting the long bar in either hole and you'll see why they are different.

    Neal



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    I am new to this forum hello to everyone out there. I have read some of the posting and this seems like a great place to get all sorts of info from some very experience individuals. I have recently purchased a 1996 Fadal 3016. The questions I have relates to what has been discussed in this posting. First in reading the manual, it says that you can set the part home (SETY, SETX) so that the table will move towards the operator to make loading and unloading easier. If you set the part home to do this what happens the next day when you CS the machine? Will it go to machine home or part home? Next question, would it be easier to set a fixture offset say E10 at this position than at the end of the program send table to E10. I have several Haas machines and I use G128 Work Offset to do this. I am thinking the reason for haveing part home is to position the table. Am I missing something? Some of these question may seem stupid to someone very familiar to the Fadal controller. I believe I am going to love this machine when I get the hang of it. Thanks for any assistance in this matter.



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    Quote Originally Posted by 11toma View Post
    I am new to this forum hello to everyone out there. I have read some of the posting and this seems like a great place to get all sorts of info from some very experience individuals. I have recently purchased a 1996 Fadal 3016. The questions I have relates to what has been discussed in this posting. First in reading the manual, it says that you can set the part home (SETY, SETX) so that the table will move towards the operator to make loading and unloading easier. If you set the part home to do this what happens the next day when you CS the machine? Will it go to machine home or part home? Next question, would it be easier to set a fixture offset say E10 at this position than at the end of the program send table to E10. I have several Haas machines and I use G128 Work Offset to do this. I am thinking the reason for haveing part home is to position the table. Am I missing something? Some of these question may seem stupid to someone very familiar to the Fadal controller. I believe I am going to love this machine when I get the hang of it. Thanks for any assistance in this matter.

    When you CS (cold start) the machine, it will always go to the center of the table. All the Fadals at my shop now have been upgraded with Numeryx controls so I've forgotten a few things. But when I used to run the old control I would use one of the fixture offsets at the end of programs to send the table forward. I would never really use the setx or sety commands for the home position because if you change the home position, all the fixture offsets are affected by this. I would just use E1 all the time unless I had several things setup then I would use E1, E2, E3 etc but I would never use the home position on parts. The G128 you are talking about sounds alot like the G92 on Fadals, I could be wrong.

    If you have the money, I HIGHLY! recommend upgrading to numeryx (used to be called numatix). You could literally learn to use it in an hour. It will pay for itself very quickly. And it will make you think that the old Fadal controls are the most idiotic thing you have ever seen in your entire life.
    http://numeryx.com/cnc/



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