Fadal control upgrade

I have a VMC15 that suits my physical footprint well, It's in decent mechanical shape. I see now advertised this new $8k control upgrade touting:

The 527F control is a full-featured digital control engineered with easy to use command line prompts for quick set-up and flexible operation. The form factor of the hardware is designed to replace the legacy CNC 88 family used in Fadal Machining Centers and is a drop in retrofit control with next to no installation required.
Features
Installs in legacy Fadal 88 and 88HS in minutes
Embedded platform with multi-processor technology
Improved block processing and ramp control for 2x- 3x improvment in cycle time
G code compatible with legacy Fadal CNC's
Ethernet Port
Program library storage – 8GB
Uses existing wiring and cable harnesses, minimal installation time
Familiar look and feel, no training required to operate
USB interface for file upload and download
1-Year Warranty!

ELE-527F-DC



----- and I wonder how you can get a 2-3x cycle time improvement? I would surely appreciate faster better path motion, better curves and surfacing, but can I really expect this from my old machine with a new control?

surely if mine breaks down this would be a logical replacement?

Anyone done or planning to do this upgrade?

Seems like in 2017 an easy upgrade should be readily available. An outfit throwing out 2x cycle time improvement sounds like utter BS and causes me to question the whole thing.

Looks like 5 new boards.. What are they actually replacing?

Seems steep.. And yeah, the 2x-3x improvement in cycle time
pushes my BS meter right off the scale.

Where did you find the description? all I see at your link is "Control upgrade-dc machines"

If you haven't seen it yet, here is another one to look at, though I don't think
it works with DC motors. From ITS.

NXGEN CNC Control | A new CNC with all the popular features and familiarity of the CNC88 legacy control, completely redesign from the ground up, using the all latest technologies.

I just saw an all new control offered for the Fadals in a certain magazine..can't remember what it is called. The colored "fadal" keys were now touch screen.

dsergison said:

I have a VMC15 that suits my physical footprint well, It's in decent mechanical shape. I see now advertised this new $8k control upgrade touting:

The 527F control is a full-featured digital control engineered with easy to use command line prompts for quick set-up and flexible operation. The form factor of the hardware is designed to replace the legacy CNC 88 family used in Fadal Machining Centers and is a drop in retrofit control with next to no installation required.
Features
Installs in legacy Fadal 88 and 88HS in minutes
Embedded platform with multi-processor technology
Improved block processing and ramp control for 2x- 3x improvment in cycle time
G code compatible with legacy Fadal CNC's
Ethernet Port
Program library storage – 8GB
Uses existing wiring and cable harnesses, minimal installation time
Familiar look and feel, no training required to operate
USB interface for file upload and download
1-Year Warranty!

ELE-527F-DC



----- and I wonder how you can get a 2-3x cycle time improvement? I would surely appreciate faster better path motion, better curves and surfacing, but can I really expect this from my old machine with a new control?

surely if mine breaks down this would be a logical replacement?

Anyone done or planning to do this upgrade?

Click to expand...

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old cnc the computers and boards and other electronics eventually fails. often old electronic parts are no longer made and difficult to get.
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old cnc often turcite or slides are loose, backlash, servo oscillation often other problems besides just the control.
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probably best thing with new control is more memory. unlimited file size near about and thousands of files can be on control. also save to usb all work offsets like G55 is useful feature

I have also looked at this 527F control upgrade for my Fadal but have not found any in-depth reviews. Mine is in excellent mechanical shape so a decent retrofit candidate.
I suppose some cycle time reduction is plausible if you are doing complex surfacing or small details where the lookahead speed of the original control limits the feed rate. I have already run into this using HSM techniques on my control- it is clearly not running at full programmed feed.
My question though would be at what point you run into limitations (if any) of the original servomotors? Like my Fadal has original 1984 motors, would they hold back the usefulness of the new control? Obviously it won't have the high speed rapids of a new machine...

Bobw said:

Looks like 5 new boards.. What are they actually replacing?

Seems steep.. And yeah, the 2x-3x improvement in cycle time
pushes my BS meter right off the scale.

Where did you find the description? all I see at your link is "Control upgrade-dc machines"

If you haven't seen it yet, here is another one to look at, though I don't think
it works with DC motors. From ITS.

NXGEN CNC Control | A new CNC with all the popular features and familiarity of the CNC88 legacy control, completely redesign from the ground up, using the all latest technologies.

Click to expand...

I think I talked to the Nextgen guys years ago. IIRC they were so confident, they had a temporary/trial retrofit you could test before pulling the trigger. Seemed pretty legit.

I get their regular sales emails. I have bought parts and boards from them in the past. the emails had the claims... and a link to buy.

It's time to upgrade your CNC Control!

my machine has good linear rails and screws and everything works. I would like to add a 4th axis. It would be very nice to speed it up a lot and add a 4th. Small moves at >35ipm get rough. I think I need better cam and a control that can use it.

dsergison said:

I get their regular sales emails. I have bought parts and boards from them in the past. the emails had the claims... and a link to buy.

It's time to upgrade your CNC Control!

my machine has good linear rails and screws and everything works. I would like to add a 4th axis. It would be very nice to speed it up a lot and add a 4th. Small moves at >35ipm get rough. I think I need better cam and a control that can use it.

Click to expand...

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better cnc use a coolant system for ball screws and the spindle. quite normal to get size changes, position changes as machine warms up. literally can be machining a surface .0005" lower at end of a long tool 2 meter path than at the beginning cause of spindle warmup getting longer and lower tool tip
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becomes more of a problem at higher ball screw feeds and higher rpm spindle runs. grid shift changes as machine warms up the hotter the machine the more the changes

completely understood. I'm not making tight tolerance parts. I want better finishes, faster would be nice.

The 527 is many many times faster than the old 1600 back panel arcade game board. It also reads better resolution from the motors .00001 IIRC. It will calculate trajectory and use much better PC arctitecture for algorithm speed and execution. You have no IDEA how slow a fadal really is until it gets a hot shot control. Now you have rigidity and no stuttering control. 8K is a bargain. Put the same part on a HAAS with high speed machining and a brother with NANO and you will find without a tool change and the actual rapids set the same that the FADAL cycle time is many times longer. The WHY is in the actual processing speed of the individual axis cards and the cross chatter between them. The back panel board was always the crutch and now bypassing it with Ethernet makes perfect sense. You should be able to rapid faster and cut at your rapid speed. Maybe they even got smart with the oiling.

And this one: Power Automation | PC-based CNC Control, CNC System, Soft CNC

Remember the Numerix controls that were supposed to be the greatest thing for Fadals about 5 years ago? Can't even find them online now.

ewlsey said:

Remember the Numerix controls that were supposed to be the greatest thing for Fadals about 5 years ago? Can't even find them online now.

Click to expand...

There was one for sale on E-bay not too long ago..
I wonder how many conversions actually were done..

My Fadal theory.. If it aint making parts fast enough.. Buy another one.

$8k.. That could put another VMC15 on your floor.


How much money are you going to pour into your Ford Escort to make it go
faster before you just say "Fuck It" and go buy a Mustang??

Quicky story about Fadals being slow.. Years ago at another shop, I had to pull
a job off the Fadal we had (had some long stuff to machine) and move it over to
the Mazak FJV20.. IIRC, 6 tools. Spot, 2 drills, reamer, endmill, chamfer cutter.
6 and a half minutes.

Get the Mazak all set up and running... SAME EVERYTHING, speeds, feeds, doc, stepovers etc...
less than 3 and a half minutes..

So that day, there were only 2 of us in the shop and the other guy was a smart one, and we
both wanted to know why there was a 3 minute difference.. We knew it would be faster, but
not that much faster. I figured 10-12 seconds per tool change, and a bit on the rapids. I
was figuring 5 minutes or so, not 3 and change.

So we put all the tools back in the Fadal, grabbed the stop watches and pulled over 2 recliners that
we for some reason had in the shop..

True story: As we are kicked back in our recliners in front of the Fadal with our stop watches and
clip boards.. The Mazak Salesman walks in.. It was kind of funny, and he reminded me of that for years.

The mazak was 1186ipm or something like that.. The Fadal, an AC machine 900 on XY, 700 on Z.. But the
ACCELERATIONS.. The direction changes.. No Dog Leg rapids on the mazak.. Even the spindle orient before
the tool change.. That time adds up.. It was something like 20 seconds of non-machining time on the
Mazak and 4 minutes on the Fadal.

I knew then that when I went out on my own, I was getting Mazaks... Then the spindle popped on that
Mazak. $11.5k, plus $11.5k core, plus some god awful amount for shipping and $2900 for a tech to
install it so the warranty would be valid...

After that I decided, I was Fadal all the way.. Though one of these days I would like to upgrade..
But I have the floor space, I can keep piling them in here like dominoes.

wesg said:

And this one: Power Automation | PC-based CNC Control, CNC System, Soft CNC

Click to expand...

They were at Westec, nice looking system

The issue with that system is that I have a DC servo machine, so adding boards to convert the resolver output to an input the system likes adds about $2k

Also with all those systems, adding a 4th and 5th axis is additional $'s. If I remember adding a 4th to the nexgen was $2k, and a 5th was $3.5k (I have the TR65 4th/5th rotary)

I have the -4 boards, and for what I do don't see the point of upgrading. A better upgrade for me would be to get a Fadal with AC servos and the -5 boards.

Considering the large base of older Haas mills, I'm surprised no one's come out with an equivalent upgrade for these machines, especially as Haas has now limited options for repair. Is Haas's legal team that good at squashing competition, or is there another reason?

dsergison said:

----- and I wonder how you can get a 2-3x cycle time improvement? I would surely appreciate faster better path motion, better curves and surfacing, but can I really expect this from my old machine with a new control?

Click to expand...

If you read Calmotion's White paper - Mercedes test cut comparison 527F and Fadal -5 CPU they show how you can get 2x improvement. Basically if you have a part that currently makes an acceptable part in 30 min. and then install the 527F on that machine at the same feeds/speeds the part time will of course still be 30 min. But, if you start to increase your feeds/speeds past the capabilities of the Fadal control making a good part, with the 527F you will be able to go faster and reduce cycle time. In the document they show cycle time went from 30 min. to 15 min. but produced a great looking part by doubling the feed, same machine.

Here is a link to their proof:

http://www.calmotion.com/files/Mercedes-fadal-527-comparison.pdf