Rediculous Fadal prices on memory

[carbidecraters]

their has to be a cheaper way to get memory upgrades... Their board cost less than $20 to produce!?!?!?!? Do we really need to pay this huge margin after dumping tons of dough into a machine? Is their another way?? I could pay a tech less than that to get me 200 gigs of memory hooked up...Anyone found another memory yet?

And Fadal techs dont post here expecting to justify the prices

[carbidecraters]

So can anyone tell me whats so complicated about the memory? anyone got good pics of the board? If I had a spare board I would attempt to have larger memory chips soldered.

[DAB_Design]

I would guess it's the same as with any machine. 90% of the parts are proprietary for a reason. Nothing really 'special' about it. Just they want you to have to go back to them to replace/upgrade parts. As for the price.....I would guess greed has a lot to do with it.

The machines we use at work (cincinnati milacron) have built in floppy drives. Of course these seem to go to crap every couple of years on only a couple of machines. Replacement costs....over $1000 (can't remember the exact figure, but it was excessive). And no, you can't just throw in a $15 drive from a local computer place.

[nervis1]

When I got my -5 4 meg card I looked at it close and got the numbers off of the memory chips. I tried to look them up on some industrial chip supply sites but could not find that exact number, I may have just not looked hard enough, maybe they are only made for Fadal, who knows.

The mem card is a bank of chips and empty slots and it may be just a matter of populating the card to get the full 16 megs.

Question is who is going to solder on a bunch of mem chips onto their 2-4k$ Fadal card? Could be an expensive experiment.

What we need is an electronics guy....I bet it would be pretty easy for someone who knew what they were doing to replicate that memory card.

[Scott_bob]

Guys,

I just have to comment... Memory is just one of the benefits of retrofitting your Fadal control with a good PC based control. When it comes to memory, I just love to hear all the complaining about "your" high cost and hastle. These CNC machines of ours have parts in them that do need replacement and upgrading, the good news is you don't have to keep the original machine builder on your payroll anymore. We have a Fadal with a retrofitted high speed machining PC based control coming up on it's one year aniversary. I am going to be programming the next job for it on Monday and I will be roughing at over 500 inches per minute and finishing some straight features within .005

When finishing the floor of some pockets I will have to feed at no more than F220. in order to get a good surface finish from the Sanvick 3 flute inserted end mill I'm running at S12000 RPM. These panels we run will go from 28 lbs of aluminum billet to less than 3 lbs of finished machined F16 aircraft components.

We are very close to buying a new Mori Seiki with a Fanuc control, I wonder how well it will do compared to our old Fadal with a Rubicon control?

We'll see...

[miljnor]

Originally Posted by Scott_bob Guys, We are very close to buying a new Mori Seiki with a Fanuc control, I wonder how well it will do compared to our old Fadal with a Rubicon control? We'll see...

Do you have the websight name to the control inquestion?

Rubicon?

[carbidecraters]

Memory is just one of the benefits of retrofitting your Fadal control with a good PC based control

Thats the problem Scott....who the hell want to pay a dime for a upgrade? Why cant we have a fair price for memory? Why did some of these controls come with less than nintendo memory? Maybe I should buy fadal stock and get osme of my money back

[carbidecraters]

Maybe I will go dig out my nintendo and make my $70,000.00 machine better


We do need a electronics guy...I know a couple. I need a spare board though...

[da21]

well , if i can get hold of a card to check , i dont mind soldering etc ,
unfortunatly i live in the UK , however if someone can photograph the card and give me the chip numbers , i can see if it's possible first

Dave

[carbidecraters]

If I can find a pic I will pm you

[carbidecraters]

Dont get me wrong I LOVE the fadal machine....its a great medium duty machine and the controls are extremely easy to use. I just cant stand to pay over 2K for simple memory chips that cost less than $5....

No I dont garage sale

[da21]

electronics CNC repairs or mods is our speciality , even if we need to re-produce a new board if the need is there we will try to help where possible , this is where the small companys can beat the big boys.

regards
Dave