Kitamura Mycenter 1 Retrofit?

[mmurray70]

Im pretty happy with my Fadal 4020. Mine has Kflop and Kmotion control, ive never used the origional control so cant comment on that. But mechanically it seems ok. I dont see any major issues. Its not built as well as the mazak 510c i used to run, but does the job, and in some ways it actually takes a cut better. I like the 2 speed belt driven spindle.

Parts availability is a huge piece of mind. I feel like I should be able to fix this machine no matter what and it will probably last me forever. Even if aftermarket support dries up there are thousands out there to be scapped. I have an old Mazak lathe here thats over 30 years old and it has rarely caused any throuble but I almost pray every time I turn on the switch because someday it may finally die with no way of fixing it. That machine makes me nervous sometimes but i feel like i can depend on my Fadal being fixable at least if it does break.

It wasnt me that voted retrofit

 

[cameraman]

How much time and effort do you want to put into becoming a controls engineer?
Is this a money maker or a cnc learning project?

I would not hesitate to rip all the guts out and refit. Worse yet I'd probably keep the yellow caps. The BT-35 would be a turn off.

<Snip for clarity>.

OTOH, if you are 20 something with a real job for money and want to learn new skills or know more than most manufacturing engineers about machine tools it can be a good side project.

In that case I'd strip it to the ground and put it back together studying every nut, switch, signal type, belt/pulley, spring function and why someone did it this way.
Dissecting an older machine can you teach you a lot if you dig after why this was done.

Just want to glue a new control on it and make chips, find a local source with the expertise.
This will come with a sticker shock and you may have a big boat anchor on your hands.
Bob

I really agree with that sentiment as so much engineering "Style/know how" has been lost.


I have been lucky as old salts in camera engineering firms (like high end Aerial systems) have sent me engineering drawing of much older extremely precisie systems before various swiss and German companies went out of business ; also nice to have legally reverse engineered many precision / surveying hardware over the past 20 years for older precision systems you learn a hell of a lot that is not in books (and in a lot of cases has been forgotten about but there are no "Digital" successors or equivalents ? ). I've been lucky as I have access to all kinds of HW especially in aerospace.


+1 definitely on the "studying every nut, switch, signal type, belt/pulley, spring function and why someone did it this way. Dissecting an older machine can you teach you a lot if you dig after why this was done".


I think it's a lost art in a way... To observe and figure stuff out, (artfully take stuff apart without buggering things up) today engineers are rewarded for developing really advanced simulations / mathematics in fluid dynamics and what not (Deep math and computer/ programming skills)... Very little nuts and bolts these days or even draughting/ "3d "/ spatial thinking.


___________________

@CB I like the yellow caps too ! lol.

 

[cameraman]

<snip>

I've talked to some Asian machine tool builders that do think that it is silly to keep a CNC in "front line" production after 10-15 years. They do recognize that there is a use for older machinery and most will support old machines and controls for far longer than most builders from USA and Europe.

My experience with Makino is quite different than yours. Makino go to great pains to build backward compatibility in to their new products. For example, you can buy an A51nx today and install it into a cell with an 15+ year old A55E.

That's very good / excellent to know.

I think in their efforts to effect "Outreach" to engineers / so called decision makers, (at least for Makino USA), they try to target older HAAS "like" machines as being time and money wasters compared to outrageously fast and powerful machines in true production environment. So "They" are very good with all their analyses about how much that "Old" machine is really costing you.


That's why some of MAZAK design principals kinda interest me (cut corners on certain things but not on others but with a sort of "planned" obsolescence so the machine is not over engineered but does it's job for its expected life time and consequently may be more cost effective (from a business point of view) over it's intended "Lifetime". (maybe ? shrugging shoulders). Seems that way.

 

[triumph406]

I have a thought on this debate that may not be worth much, but here it is anyways.

Recently an outfit or 2 started offering retrofits for Fadal controls for around 8k. So a Fadal is a Fadal and they have some very glaring deficiencies. But as far as keeping old iron and its viability I can retrofit my fadal in the future for somewhere around 8K, and it is mostly plug and play. No toolchanger ladders to build etc. It just is a tick box in favor of what may otherwise be an unfavorable machine.

You couldn't retrofit an old Fanuc (like the OP) without a tremendous headache and somewhere around the 8k price tag.

So retrofit commodity machines almost always equals a bad idea, but adding a bit of money to an old Fadal for a premade retrofit sounds alot more palletable. What are you guy's thoughts...??

My though is that these controls will update the Fadal to where a Fadal should have been had Fadal continued to evolve the control. faster processor, more memory, more accurate contouring.

I had looked a few of the aftermarket controls when I was in the market for a 4020 fadal. The costs aren't exorbitant until you add 4th and 5th axis cards. I have a TR65 4th/5th rotary, cards are about an extra $5k on top of the approx $8k control cost.

It turned out that the -4 control in the 4020 was adequate for I do, and not nearly as limited as people would have you believe.

I don't know if many of these aftermarket controls are getting sold, but there's I think 4 now availible, if that means anything

 

[Toolbert]

There's a balance between the control, the CAM and the type of parts being made. I like the Fadal control. There are occasional parts we make with only basic contouring features, but BobCAM still generates 500K bytes of Gcode, and sending that kind of program at 4800 baud gets old. The control deals with it fine but proofing the code is tedious. Without a CAM and simulation, i.e. a high confidence that the CAM matches the setup, I'm stuck hand editing Gcode to turn repeat sequences into subroutines, studying the Gcode to determine what's safe to skip in a dry-run, and jumping around the program.

Getting back to the OP, with the Fanuc 3M with 4K RAM, yes you can drip-feed 500K, but I can't imagine proofing one-off parts that way. That's the main reason the Kitamura didn't work for me. If the OP is making production parts, drip feed or not, maybe it's the perfect machine for him, I'm not passing judgement.

If mine was a different kind of business, we'd have CAM with a better integration with the control, tool management, reliable modeling of stock, fixtures, obstructions, simulation. It would then make sense to have a control with a direct network connection, unlimited program size, simulating parts at the control etc. For what we do with the Fadal, which is second ops on waterjet parts, and making tooling for other machines, at the moment there's no business case for an upgrade.

If we upgrade the control (CNC-88HS) within the life of this machine, most likely it's not because it breaks, or I get tired of the interface, or because it can't make parts, but because the work mix changes and I can't afford to spend a day proofing a complex setup that with a modern control and better CAM would happen almost entirely off-line.

 

[Ianagos]

There's a balance between the control, the CAM and the type of parts being made. I like the Fadal control. There are occasional parts we make with only basic contouring features, but BobCAM still generates 500K bytes of Gcode, and sending that kind of program at 4800 baud gets old. The control deals with it fine but proofing the code is tedious. Without a CAM and simulation, i.e. a high confidence that the CAM matches the setup, I'm stuck hand editing Gcode to turn repeat sequences into subroutines, studying the Gcode to determine what's safe to skip in a dry-run, and jumping around the program.

Getting back to the OP, with the Fanuc 3M with 4K RAM, yes you can drip-feed 500K, but I can't imagine proofing one-off parts that way. That's the main reason the Kitamura didn't work for me. If the OP is making production parts, drip feed or not, maybe it's the perfect machine for him, I'm not passing judgement.

If mine was a different kind of business, we'd have CAM with a better integration with the control, tool management, reliable modeling of stock, fixtures, obstructions, simulation. It would then make sense to have a control with a direct network connection, unlimited program size, simulating parts at the control etc. For what we do with the Fadal, which is second ops on waterjet parts, and making tooling for other machines, at the moment there's no business case for an upgrade.

If we upgrade the control (CNC-88HS) within the life of this machine, most likely it's not because it breaks, or I get tired of the interface, or because it can't make parts, but because the work mix changes and I can't afford to spend a day proofing a complex setup that with a modern control and better CAM would happen almost entirely off-line.

Why do you send files at 4800baud? With a 88hs I send at 38k

 

[carbonbl]

Why do you send files at 4800baud? With a 88hs I send at 38k

I can't speak for Toolbert, but I know that on my -2 system fadal, if I run at higher than 4800 baud file transfers and DNC will occasionally error out/stall. 4800 is rock solid and in my experience almost never starves the control of data during DNC, due to the slow block processing speed of the -2 control. This is with a brand new interface card in the machine with a Calmotion DNC unit connected in the cabinet- not sure you could get a more solid RS232 connection than that.

Although I hear where Toolbert is coming from, I use a lot of the capabilities he eschews at very little extra cost and to great time/capability benefit on my old Fadal. CAM is a combination of HSMExpress and Fusion360, depending on whether I need 2.5 or 3 axis toolpaths. The tool libraries interchange between the two programs and I accurately model stock and jaws/fixtures for almost every part I do (I have readymade CAD templates for common stuff, just add features as needed). Virtually no programming is done at the control and almost everything is DNC'd (Calmotion unit is soo cheap relative to how easy/fast it makes transferring/DNCing stuff). If I have to manually edit I'd rather use my office computer and drag-and-drop into the DNC folder. I rarely make more than 50 of anything, often a lot less.

If I'm understanding right, it seems like you (Toolbert) don't really trust or understand your postprocessor and thus have to hand-edit a lot of stuff? Also if you are getting 500kb from basic contouring (not sure what you consider basic), there's very likely a few settings in BobCAM and the post that could much improve that. Although I have no experience with BobCAM there are options in all other CAM programs I've used- usually having to do with toolpath tolerance, arc fitting, and minimum move distances. Screwing around with rewriting CAM output means a lot of time and money left on the table I'd think, no matter what your business, CNC control version or machine...this is not only relevant to Fadals.

 

[Toolbert]

Why do you send files at 4800baud? With a 88hs I send at 38k

Thanks, because it was flaky at 9600 and higher and fixing it's not presently high enough on the list. Figure something isn't configured right, I agree it ought to work.