fadal 88hs training. Peoria, IL

[dsergison]

if there is someone near East Peoria who would be willing to train me a bit I am trying to learn my VMC15. I can change tools, cold start and home it. but that took me all night and a lot of frustration to work through.

I can pay, provide a meal, fresh cookies, cold drinks etc... or even spindle time for your "govermnent projects"

 

[Chobyn]

Manuals

I am not anywhere near you or I would be glad to help. Do you have the manuals? If not, do a search for fadal manuals online, the are available in pdf format as a free download.

 

[Bobw]

The 88HS has really got to be the easiest control in the world, everything you need to do can be done through menu's.

<enter next command> (shorten that to <enc>' That line is very important. Its where the machine will start up. That's where you type 'CS' to cold start it.

from <enc> if you hit jog, you will go to jog mode, and then you jog around. hit
'manual' to go back to the <enc> line.

Hit manual from the <enc> line and it will bring you to MDI. This is where you are going to change tools, M6T?, you'll hit enter and it won't do anything, but it will flash "WAITING". When it says that, its telling you to hit the green button.

Hit manual again, and you will be back to the <enc> line.

Now you get to the fun stuff, from the <enc> line, hit the space bar, that will bring you to your friendly menu's. hit the space bar again and it brings you to menu #2, hit it again and it brings you to menu #3. Hit it again and it brings you to the <enc> line.

Handy stuff in the menu's. 1st spbar menu, #4 (set fixture), literally just follow the directions.

1st space bar menu #3, return to home, do this before you power down, makes powering up a lot easier.

3rd spbar menu, #2, (setup), this is where you can set your tool heights, always use multiple tools, even if you are only doing 1 tool, it lets you put in spacer block size and adds it to the offset. Just follow the directions.

To turn the spindle on hold the shift key down and hit spindle on/off. Safety feature.

NEVER EVER use 1st spacebar menu #7, (axis zero), SETX, SETY, SETZ, and SETH, same thing, never ever use them. You will crash your machine, it'll change all your offsets, and driving a facemill into the table is not cool. Actually you may have to use them once, set your home position to the cold start position and just leave it there (depending on what the previous owner did).

The <manual> button is your friend, if you end up someplace and you have no clue where you are, keep hitting the manual button until you come back to the <enter next command> line.

Ask away, you'll be up and running in no time.

 

[dsergison]

well I dont find it very freindly. I thought my dynapath delta 20 was a pain too at first. It takes a while to get used to a new control.

I confuses me how hitting MANUAL 3 damn times apparently cycles through different versions of manual?

sometimes it does what I want, sometimes not. (from identical <enter next command> prompts). I feel the menus and new user training manual are very difficult to understand. I feel like something is eluding me.

After 3 hours I managed to do all the things you said on my own last night. cold start it, load a warmup program, run it, park it back at the coldstart position, change tools, etc... which isnt bad i guess, but I'd rather go to the dentist. I was only successfull about every 14th attempt at doing anything, and I never did get to setting any fixture offsets or loading any program of my own.

this is why I would like someone local to come over for dinner and show me the practical way to go about common tasks while I take notes, that I can repeat without flipping through the manual for every command.

I dont use many CNC's like normal folks who do it daily. I exclusively drip-fed my dynapath from a cam system so I only ever got competent at the tasks of picking up part locations and setting offsets on that one machine.

 

[dsergison]

spacebar menu? whats that?
I type MU as it prompts me when i screw up to go see stuff, that menu sucks.

it does not use plain english, for instance "list programs" you would think that would LIST the programs, right? nooo it scrolls the loaded program by real quick. and you type 13 to list programs?

and SETCS. this is stupidly named. I dont want to SET a CS position. I want to GO TO a CS position. took me a few minutes to realize that.

and i dont really want home to be at cold start because you have to lean real far in.
but the warmup program i have was apparently incremental because it limits out if i run it from a table forward position.


My old Tree at least had the cold start position at the front of Y so you could reach your parts.

see, im getting around. but it must be the hard way.

 

[Chobyn]

Cold Start

CS is the position I leave the machine at when I power down, and it is where the machine needs to be when you power up in the morning.

This is how I do it...

This is a one time procedure to establish the 'home' position (not the cold start).

Power up your machine, CS etc, it is going to ask you if you want to go to the previous home position, say NO. Press the jog key, move ONLY the 'y' axis, and jog the table to where you want it to be when you are changing parts. Type SETH, enter. DONE.

SETCS to tell the machine you want to send the machine back to CS, enter, HO, enter, Machine should move back to the CS position. Power down.

The daily procedure.

Power up, CS, move to previous position. Run your warm-up program. Proceed with your day. At the end of the day, SETCS to tell the machine you want to send the machine back to CS, enter, HO, enter, Machine should move back to the CS position. Power down.

DONE.

The spacebar menu he is talking about is in the page menu. At the <enter next command> prompt, type PA, enter. This will bring up the active program. at the bottom of the screen there are some number/letter options you can use to access various functions. You use the spacebar to navigate thru a variety of these alpha-numeric lists at the bottom of the screen.

Once you get used to the control you will see it really is pretty simple. It is just that instead of having a direct button to access a function you have to go to specific menu or page to get what you want done. It helps if you have (had) any experience working with DOS on older computers. While not the same, there are some similarities.

 

[Bobw]

Space bar menu's.

You may have them turned off.

From the "enter next command line", simply hit the space bar. it should take you to this wonderful menu. If you hit it again, it will take you to another wonderful menu.

It can be turned off in the parameters.

To turn them on, which will make your life infinitely easier.

From the "enter next command" line. Type "SETP" and hit enter. That means "set parameters". Read the directions at the bottom of the screen for how to navigate the menus. Its on the second page, in the right hand column, 4th one down. "CMD menu" switch it to #3 "toggle on with space bar". Power down and then power back up. Set it to Format 2 while you are in there.

You don't actually need to remember many commands. TA,1 is handy for loading a program(you can do that from the space bar menus also), CS for cold starting it(and it tells you to do that). That's really about all you have to remember, the rest is menu driven.

MU, for menu, that's basically documentation. If you don't remember how to program a G4 (is 1000.. 1 second or 10 seconds?) or a drill cycle (what the hell does R do?) and the manual is 5 layers deep on your desk, you can go to the machine, and the syntax for all that stuff is in the machine, under MU. If you need to look up an error code, its in MU,

and i dont really want home to be at cold start because you have to lean real far in.
but the warmup program i have was apparently incremental because it limits out if i run it from a table forward position.

Its really easiest to leave your home at the CS position, it's one less thing to screw up, and one less thing to do when firing the machine up. At the end of your program, just have it come back to the travel limit closest to you(I have it come just shy). G0 E0 X0 Y9.9 for a 4020, Y7.9 for a 16 inch machine.

 

[dsergison]

thanks. things are beginning to click. and I don't mean the start/waiting "clicker"

and I do have a space-bar menu! it's wonderful. I don't know how I didn't stumble upon it before.

I'm going to try loading up an old small part program and cut some air.