And miss all the fun
No really not

Peter from Holland

Good to see things are all back to normal.

I suggest I organize the european Deckel tour for next year (or whenever the next EMO coincides) and we use the opportunity for some jousting at a castle close to my place. They have these events for the tourist all the time. Afterwards we can all get drunk till we puke. I find that really helps the group building. Its better anyway then the bonding affairs were you dance naked around a fire with a turkey feather sticking in your ass and then talk about your feelings.

On the 3M: I never really used one, but played with it briefly on 2 machines I parted out.
It subjectively seems to be a more professional development then the Dialog 1-4. Nicer packaging and better documentation in some regards. Its just part of a bigger control family from a more professional company and with wider application (turning too). Deckel/Grundig only caught up in that regard with the Dialog 11.
I do not want to get involved with the 3M, since I am too dumm to store use of 2 different controls in my brain. I have problems with just the Dialog.
I'd still like to know though the development history of the Siemens controls and how they evolved into the later Siemens controls. Its a pitty Siemens is such a sucky company for parts and service.

The 3M was a Siemens - Fanuc joint development. The last joint model was the 5M/5T series.
When GM Oshawa bought their FP4NC they wanted a 3M control.
When they found out that they had to use the Siemens instead of Fanuc interface the sprung for the extra $30K and got a 6MB2 level up.

The 3M Control housing has a GE logo clearly cast into it. Is GE absolutely the same as Fanuc?

Who is "it" in your bottom quote? Fanuc?

Is there any continuity between the GE control and later Siemens control products, or were they completely different tracks?

As you can see I dont really get all those relations.

That may have been built after GE Fanuc was founded.
Before that Siemens and Fanuc set up a joint venture in Chicago called General Numerics.
That was done so that American builders would put something different than the awful GE, Westinghouse or, the best of that lot, Allan-Bradley controls on their machines.
In those days Americans were very jingoistic and did not want Off Shore equipment, particularly not from the Japs.
Yes, Fujitsu Fanuc Ltd. (they dropped the Fujitsu in 1982).
No, none what ever. After the split up of General Numerics, I seem to remember that Siemens wanted to push the 7 series which Fanuc did not want, GE lent their name and Sales Offices to the new GE Fanuc joint venture.
Siemens then developed the multi-axis System 8 on their own but still had the Fanuc agency for Germany (possibly Europe).

This was a very difficult control in the first four years and caused a lot of prospects not to buy a German high end CNC machine at that time.

Thanks for the input. All very complicated.
Its a pitty that such industial history is not documented.
One can probably find more info on the net on a "troubles with tribbles" Star Treck episode then on essential industrial history. Depressing.


On edit: I checked and indeed "The Trouble With Tribbles" has its own Wikipedia page. Amazing.

Arno:
By difficult you are speaking of the "8" and how hard it was to run,program? Or hard to get support/service? Or was it just a bad control...poor reliability and functionality?
Cheers Ross

The 8 control was put on the DZ4 horizontal machining centers,with tool changers and pallet changers. It had some software issues, but they were overcome with some software updates. There were not to many G N or Siemans guys who knew the system support was not very good if you had issues.

Regards
DD

The thing I find most appealing about the Dialog controls other than the D11 is that they have schematics (poor though they may be). With the Siemens and D11 you are running blind.

Alan

Except if one happens to have these schematics .........

?????????????

Ross,
These were usually put on 4-axis+ machines and needed a high end CAM system in the early '80s. Not only did you need the system you needed an expensive highly trained programmer.
I've seen Whalis sitting idle, waiting for proofed programmes.

DD already mentioned the problem with service. This got worse when Henry Vogelgesang (Siemens contribution to the GN service team) became the Service Manager after the split and could not go out on every call personally.

The dialog type controls, but really "cheap" memory for computers changed the shop floor over the last twenty years tremendously.
Cheers,
Arno

PS. Didn't get any eMail notices of new posts since the forenoon.