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cnc boneyards + replacement electronics

pal's machining

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 8, 2002
Location
owatonna mn. 55060
As our cnc equipment ages now and then a monitor will go bad, a spindle drive may go bad, etc. Call to the machine distributor for a new moniter and it will cost $4000.00. Todays market my 8 year old machine is worth $15,000 if i am lucky. Find the right used cnc surplus house and by a testes used one for $600.00 I would like to know of such shops to keep my maintaince cost in control. Please E-mail me or if it allow on this site post your experiences, and or recomended sources to contact.
 
you don't say if it is fanuc or not, but Fanuc parts of common nature can be found at tennessee industrial electronics, many times at half of fanuc's pricing.
 
actually, pal's machining does raise an excellent point about cnc stuff. i know that we live in a throw away society and if a circuit board goes bad, it normally gets tossed then you replace it with a new one. the era of doing diagnostics and fixing the board itself seems to have disappeared. My brother is an engineer for Hewlett Packard Computers and he says they stopped fixing circuit boards eons ago. The boards diagnose themselves now and say "replace me" and that's it.

Well in cnc machining that does not cut it. some of us have older controllers and every circuit board and display monitor can't just be thrown out. You would think there would be some electronic genius somewhere who has a company that repairs proprietary IC boards for a reasonable price. I know from my brother that this stuff is not quantum physics. The individual electronic components for all of these boards or their equivalent IC parts are around, it just takes someone willing to sit down and do the diagnostics and replace the appropriate faulty IC on the board. Some of the controller makers will still repair for some of their older models but not without a lot of grumbling and fanfare and expense if at all.

I used to build PCs myself years ago and used a technique called "wire wrapping" to make boards for experimental purposes. I just don't have time to go back into that stuff. I can't know and do everything. I would rather be making chips.

Maybe some kind soul out there knows a place..say ..like in california where somebody does that sort of thing and is willing to share who that might be. I am sure somebody could make a good living fixing proprietary IC boards.
 
The problem is that without schematics it can be quite difficult to fix a board. For instance, on my Hurco CNC that I rescued I had an intermittent *very annoying* problem. It was killing the use of the control. Once I had the schematics, however, I was able to fix it fairly quickly. Of course you need a scope and possibly a logic analyzer, but fundamentally it can be fixed.

There is a caveat to this too, however. If something is using PALs (programable logic), PLDs, etc. then if those fail you are in a world of hurt. Essentially these are programmed with a schematic inside of them. Unless you have the formula you can't do anything. Even if you had a working system you may be stuck as these have 'security' fuses that prevent their being read (if the fuse is burned).

Alan
 
Good point wrench about PALs but you would think if the manufacturer of the controller still exists, they could at least supply you with that info so that someone could fix your board if they won't.

Thanks, Doug, for the info, i may have to try this outfit at some point along the way when a board goes bad on me. They may be expensive but it still may be cheaper than buying a whole new controller.
 
Wrench,
You are so correct that it is almost impossible to repair a board without the schematic. Having working in the cnc industry repairing machines for many years I have found that none of the OEM's will give you the schematics to there boards, Now I could reverse engineer them and build test jigs but then the cost to you guys the end user would be high ( time and labor cost money ) and if it is not atleast 30% below the cost of a new board I have found customer will always buy the new board over the repaired board. Someday this will be the only way to go as OEM's are slowly stopping to support older controls as Fanuc has done on the 200b and the 3000c controls. These dead boards and old controls I am buying up and will start repairing them as now I have the market where I will get maybe 20 to 30 of the same boards to repair a year, and this will help lower the cost of the boards.
So you see there are companies like mine that want to repair these boards but sometimes it's just not cost effective for us to do while the OEM is still selling new ones..
 
( time and labor cost money )

And the diff between those two is.....?


I have a local guy that will try to rework boards for me. The trick is to find that guy.


I know there is a place called CNC Spares. I have looked through their inventory before. Just a used parts place, not really into fixing boards, but you might be able to pic up a used board or motor there.

I just did a search for them, and came up with all kinds of stuff! Looks like they may have grown a bunch since I last looked a cpl yrs ago.
eek.gif
 
( time and labor cost money )
And the diff between those two is.....?

TIME = set up of test stand and sourcing out replacement parts....

LABOR = testing of boards and repair..

Kinda like my machine shop guy charges x amount of dollars to make a setup to make my parts, and x amount of dollars to actual manufacture them.
 
Dear Pal's,

Try these people:

North American Industrial Inc.
905-565-6166

I've had Spindle Drives, X and Z axis drives, servo motors,etc. all repaired and supplied by Mitsubishi in the past. These people are 30%-40% less expensive and their service is great. They can repair circuit boards, drives, monitors and motors.

They service Fanuc, Siemens, Mitsubishi and they are an authorized service center for all. Give em a shot.

Mike
 
Dear Pal's,

Try these people:

North American Industrial Inc.
905-565-6166

I've had Spindle Drives, X and Z axis drives, servo motors,etc. all repaired and supplied by Mitsubishi in the past. These people are 30%-40% less expensive and their service is great. They can repair circuit boards, drives, monitors and motors.

They service Fanuc, Siemens, Mitsubishi and they are an authorized service center for all. Give em a shot.

Mike
 
Some distributors and manufacturers will have "secret stores" of used and reconditioned parts lying around. In many cases, all you have to do is ask the right person if there are any available.
 
The reason that the OEM does not want to give out schematics for the stuff they no longer support is because they want you to buy new or an upgrade. I was asking for some help for my DynaPath 10 and the suggestion was to trade it in for a newer model at about $0.003 to the dollar for the newer control. I found one that was on a worn out mill and now have many spare parts. Ibeleive that one of the reasons we are in trouble in this county in maufacturing, is that the big businesses seem to think that we can all operate like them and if not we should just get out of the way. This is why a lot of the old line iron is not made anymore and they lost market to those Asian rim areas that saw a way to get to the little guy.
 
"Call to the machine distributor for a new moniter and it will cost $4000.00."

Exactly. Oh, uh...

No, I'm not a machinist, and I don't play one on tv. I have a burning curiousity about how to do things by myself and/or cheaply, though, and I'm a big fan of free stuff.

Not so long ago, I was going to work on a project for an acquaintance that has some aging cnc equipment. He has a Hardinge HC with a dead Bandit 1 controller. He wanted to get the lathe running, but he mentioned that parts for it were outrageous. I couldn't really believe that- the thing is ancient- I figured the toughest part would be finding any parts at all for the controller.

Well sure enough, there are parts out there. As well as whole controllers. And they are outrageous. IMO.

So yeah, being the linux-head that I am, I looked to see if anyone had put linux to work as a controller for cnc equipment. And what do ya know, someone has.

I'm quite surprised no one has mentioned this as an alternative to aging proprietary controllers. ???

Looks like 'E-Stop' knows about it. Anyone else aware of CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO mail list or linuxcnc.org?

Anyway, just a thought for ya all.

[back to lurking]
Keith J.
 








 
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