BMC-20 Ultimax II, drip feed very slow...

[GPena]

Hi,

We have a vertical mach. center, model BMC-20 with an Ultimax II controller; the machine works fine, the only problem we have is that when we run large programs using the drip feed function (DNC), the program runs very slow; it seems that it reads a bunch of lines (about 500) and then it stops for a moment and then restarts for the next group of lines and then stops again and so on. We increased the comunication speed to 19200 bauds and it is the same.

Any help will be very appreciated.

Thank you.

Greg.

[Rick Kight]

Greg

Does this delay happen imediately when you satrt the program or after the machine has run for a bit?
If it happens after the machine has run for a little while then the machine is outrunning the drip feed.

What type of machining are you doing? If you are doing surfacing or something similar with a lot of very short moves one after another and a fast feed rate the machine will outrun the drip feed. I have seen this on my machine. It is just one of those things with older controllers and slow baud rates. Also make sure that the PC you are feeding from does not have anything running in the background that could cause a delay. I run a dedicated PC just for drip feeding to the machine and have absolutely no other program running but the DNC program.

Rick

[GPena]

Thank you for your reply, it seems that this is a controller issue due to the age and nothing will improve this; maybe we'll have to live with it...Or buy a newer machine???

GP.

[JWC]

You can also check the parameters in the DNC software. I use cimco and there are settings that can control that sort of thing aside from the baud rate. As long as the drip doesn't affect the actual machining, I would not worry about it.

[Frenchman]

The ULTIMAX II control has a very limited amount of memory available for running nc programs.
one way to increase (a small amount) is delete any conversational programs stored the the control's onboard memory. This will allow this memory to be used for downloading NC Files.
Due to the design of the control the actual memory can not be increased.
Best Solution Is NEW MACHINE. with networking capabilities large nc files can be loaded in seconds in the back ground.