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Why is memory upgrade so expensive

tay2daizzo8

Hot Rolled
Joined
Nov 8, 2013
Location
north of Bean town
from what ive read its a minimum 5k for more memory in a cnc mill(my particular is an okuma v4018)
i just dont get why?? is it special type of memory? i assumed it was RAM maybe flash? Idunno but its stupid expensive for a 20yo machine
 
from what ive read its a minimum 5k for more memory in a cnc mill(my particular is an okuma v4018)
Have you actually gotten a quote? $5k sounds silly to me. But I have no idea were bean town is. So we don't know your agent.

Any reason your crying about it here in general, and not the CNC section???

I don't think you have a fire to piss on. Despite the bad news, no ones ever paid $5k for additional memory.
 
bean town is boston
yes we did get a formal quote maybe 18 or so months ago( i cant remember the specs that were quoted)

this is a GENERAL CNC matter so i see no difference in where i post

And if you do a quick thread search you will see other people have gotten insane quotes as well

Is it just standard RAM you plug into the MB?
 
Is it just standard RAM you plug into the MB?

Unlikely. 20 year old machine needs 20 year old memory, which has not been made in at least 10 years for the commercial market. But likely still is for the military market under the Diminished Manufacturing Supply (DMS) program. Sometimes exorbitantly expensive is hugely cheaper than not available at all. You have to balance the cost of maintenance and upkeep of old machines with updating.

That said, a smart kid working on an EE degree might me able to come up with a workaround solution for some custom work on his skateboard, 2 six packs and a pizza.

CarlBoyd
 
bean town is boston
yes we did get a formal quote maybe 18 or so months ago( i cant remember the specs that were quoted)

this is a GENERAL CNC matter so i see no difference in where i post

And if you do a quick thread search you will see other people have gotten insane quotes as well

Is it just standard RAM you plug into the MB?

I recently got a quote for additional memory for a 20 year old Cinci.

960K for $5,368
3MB for $7,789
9MB for $11,155

In addition to those prices I was also given rough prices on unlocking drip feed capability (around 6k) and unlocking ability to use the floppy drive that's already on the machine (about 600 bucks).

Something tells me it has little or nothing to do with "what kind" and more to do with, as Chris so succinctly put it, "because they can".
 
I used to know the answer to this, but no way was gonna pay $5K for additional memory and think I forgot the answer.
 
I do not know how to do this......
But I would start looking around for someone who may know a less than factory approved way of getting what you need. Whether it ends up as a memory upgrade or maybe a drip feed option. Its a 20 year old machine....
I would never attempt to put a sunroof in my wifes 1 year old car......but the daughters 12 year old toyota?....bring it on.
I think you have the equivalent of my daughters Toyota.....
 
Lots of memory available on Ebay. Hell, I've got some computers that are pushing 20 years old.
The original poster is NOT buying memory. He is buying the services of the limited number of people that can do this ,and make it work.This is the reason that many used cnc machines are so cheap. Edwin Dirnbeck
 
I can only speak from my experience with Fanuc 0 series controls. Memex and Tulip want around $800.00 to expand memory to the max design capacity. The process is really very easy. Back up everything "just in case". Plug in the chips. Reset parameters for memory size. Drive on.

I looked at the existing memory on my machines, TC55257BPL-10, found them on Ebay for $2.78 each + $5.95 shipping. Bought enough to maximize all my 0 controls.

Backed up, plugged in, changed parameters, done. Now I can keep all the programs for a family of parts in the 0T instead of having to reload them for each one when i need to make more of those parts. Of course it is still not anywhere enough for the mills, but it has cut down on the drip feeding.
 
.....I looked at the existing memory on my machines, TC55257BPL-10, found them on Ebay for $2.78 each + $5.95 shipping. Bought enough to maximize all my 0 controls.

One can do similar with the 10 series controls too. Sadly Fanuc closed that door with the later controls by making the memory chips SMD units. I suppose if one has the ability to reflow solder SMD chips though.....
 
from what ive read its a minimum 5k for more memory in a cnc mill(my particular is an okuma v4018)
i just dont get why?? is it special type of memory? i assumed it was RAM maybe flash? Idunno but its stupid expensive for a 20yo machine

Why do you need memory for an OSP-7000 especially "why" for an OSP-E100? The only thing that gets stored is programs.

FD-1 is 56k and FD-0 is 256k (FD-0 on the E100 is way bigger than that). I would say you need to get them onto a PC, via floppy or RS-232.

R

EDIT>I'm 99.9% sure it's not a Howa machine (1998?), so not Fanuc.
 
Why do you need memory for an OSP-7000 especially "why" for an OSP-E100? The only thing that gets stored is programs.

FD-1 is 56k and FD-0 is 256k (FD-0 on the E100 is way bigger than that). I would say you need to get them onto a PC, via floppy or RS-232.

R

EDIT>I'm 99.9% sure it's not a Howa machine (1998?), so not Fanuc.
its a osp 700 and u10...i need the memory to load bigger programs:skep:

i have fd1 and md1

the biggest i can fit in md1 is about 62k
 
I have 400 something KB on MD1 in my MCV4020 with 100E control. The machine had an RS232 port but it can only be used for up/down load not drip feed. Unless you have the DNC-B option that allows drip feeding. It was roughly 4k for that option when I priced it after buying the machine. Of course I didn't know drip feeding would be an option so I never thought to ask.

I ended up paying around 6k for the DNC-DT option. It's a data server with a 500mb hard drive and ethernet. The ethernet is awesome to transfer files. A server is setup with FTP linked to a folder on the servers drive. Drag and drop files into the folder and push the TC button on the machine and the folders content is displayed just like it was on MD1. It's a little tricky to set it up the first time but after that it works better than anything else I've seen. Large files can be transfered directly to the HD and run from there.

More memory would be nice but I think I'd rather have the DNC-DT option.
 
So in the olden days of OSP, the memory area was divided into BB1: where the user programs were run from, and BB0: where the system files resided. Most machines had about a meg of free memory in BB0: A smart feller could store his programs in BB0: as long as some was left for "temporary" system file use. Then a little used function called schedule program was used to pull up those programs and run them sequentially. Don't know if modern OSP controls still have that handy little capability....
 
its a osp 700 and u10...i need the memory to load bigger programs:skep:

i have fd1 and md1

the biggest i can fit in md1 is about 62k

Going of my own memory here, which by the way is WAAAY more expensive to upgrade, but I'll try.

You have fd1 and md1 (File directory and Memory directory) but that also means you have fd0 which is a storage space with much more memory(256k). The kicker is that if it's too much K then you can't transfer it to md1 (which I believe is 56k, but irrelevant if it's too small).

But you can run schedule programs from the main directory. I'm going to try to explain this, so try and keep up with crazy. In fd0 the Main PROGRAM.MIN will be your program. In the main directory the scheduled program will be SCHEDULE.SDF and will look like this;

SCHEDULE.SDF
PSELECT FD0:PROGRAM.MIN
END

at the end of your (PROGRAM.MIN) program change the M2 to RTS

Here is where the voodoo really starts. Go to Auto mode and extend,extend until you see sp select (not program select, but same thing), press that, press* select and a list of scheduled programs arrives, select SCHEDULE.SDF. The screen wil be blank......press Cylce start....it will run the PROGRAM.MIN from the fd0, and be showing you that program, and all the positions and active commands just like normal.

Note> same as dripping; feed hold works, everything works, mid-auto works, but if you reset it, it's the same as resetting a dripping program.

R
 








 
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