Drip Feeding to a Fanuc 6m

[TR MFG]

We have this old clunker….Its a Hitachi Seiki VA-40 equipped with a Fanuc 6m control. We purchased a premade cable and hooked the machine up to a pc. While we have no problems transferring programs back and forth between the pc and machine, we can’t seem to get the machine to dnc properly. Seems like the control only reads a portion of the program and then stops.

Now, I have asked some other people what they thought and it seems like we have been getting mixed results. Some say that control can’t DNC, some say it can if we change a parameter, some say it will only DNC if we purchase a btr board. I would have no problem purchasing a btr board, I just want to make sure that is the only option before we spend $$$$ on this machine.

Anybody have any experience with this issue on this control or have any suggestions?

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by TR MFG We have this old clunker….Its a Hitachi Seiki VA-40 equipped with a Fanuc 6m control. We purchased a premade cable and hooked the machine up to a pc. While we have no problems transferring programs back and forth between the pc and machine, we can’t seem to get the machine to dnc properly. Seems like the control only reads a portion of the program and then stops. Now, I have asked some other people what they thought and it seems like we have been getting mixed results. Some say that control can’t DNC, some say it can if we change a parameter, some say it will only DNC if we purchase a btr board. I would have no problem purchasing a btr board, I just want to make sure that is the only option before we spend $$$$ on this machine. Anybody have any experience with this issue on this control or have any suggestions?

Like all Fanuc controls, you may or may not have the features needed to do it. What you need on the machine is this...

Tape Mode on the mode selector switch.
RS-232 serial port on the machine.

If you have those two features, then you should be able to "Drip feed". You will need to set the parameters up for the proper handshaking and communications speed. I would recommend X-on X-Off handshaking ( I believe Fanuc refers to that as "control codes are used".

Make sure the software you are using is configured for the same protocol. If you are using hardwire handshaking, make sure the cable is correct.

TO use...

Put machine in Tape mode.
Press Cycle start... machine waits for CNC program

Send program to machine from your software
Machine begins running the cycle.


Single block, dry run, etc. all work fine with Tape mode.

Chris

[TR MFG]

Hey Chris, Thanks for the quick reply. This machine does have the tape option on the control and an RS232 port on the side. I will go double check settings as soon as I get a chance, and see if it works.

Just out of cuorisity do you think that even though this machine has the port and the tape setting, the control would still not accept a drip feed?

Matt Mason
TR Manufacturing

[Chris D]

There are/were options for large buffers used with drip feeding, but they really are not needed.

Drip feeding is really a very basic and fundemental aspect of communications - it is not a machine tool "feature". All that is happening here is this....


Machine in Tape Mode, press cycle start, send program to machine...

The machine will accept as much CNC data as it can till it's buffer is full. At this point is sends a "Stop" code to the host computer. As the machine uses up more the CNC program in it's buffer, a "Start" command is sent to the host computer to send more data. This repeats until the end of the program is reached.

The "Stop" and "Start" commands are basic communications commands. They can be either a hardwire configuration (cable wireing) or a software configuration (X-on, X-Off - in FANUC terminology Control codes are used).

That is really all there is to it.

So at the machine end of things you need tape mode, which causes the CNC to read data from the input rather than memory. You need an RS232 port configured for hand shaking (Control codes are used in the parameters) and you need a cable to the host computer.

The host computer needs to have handshaking setup the same way (X-On X-Off).

That's about all there is to it.

Chris

[CBMach]

My Machine is control Fanuc 6M too.
I try to sometime with out the board. Tried.
I have to buy BTR to run DNC.
Now it work OK.

[Drew]

Matt could you let me know what you ended up doing as I have a 6m-b I would like to drip feed. My machine has about 6k memory.

[Dan Fritz]

There are two sure-fire ways to drip-feed a Fanuc 6M.

1) You can use our MultiPort PC-DNC Editor with a "direct connect" BTR cable, which fakes out the CNCs tape reader. This approach requires that you have a PC located very close to the CNC control.

2) You can install a BTR board. We like the one made by ADR corporation, and we sell it through our West coast distributor, Refresh Your Memory, Inc. (www.rym.com).

The BTR board is more expensive, but it lets you run a long serial cable from your PC to the CNC control. The "direct connect" method uses the parallel port from your PC to connect directly to the CNCs tape reader port. The direct connect method is just a custom cable and software, so it's less expensive thatn the BTR board.

You can get more info. on both systems from www.rym.com

[Camfather]

I'm having the same issue, I have decided......
How much is punch tape , it's starting to sound like the cheapest solution lol right?