How to determine the block look ahead of a Meldas 520?

[Andrew M]

We have a 1997 Hartford VMC 850 with a Meldas 520 controller. No books or manuals. How or where would I look to determine what the block look ahead is? Reason for asking is because we are looking at a new machine which only has 40 block look ahead. Being so old I can't imagine the Meldas has a big block look ahead like modern machines, but if the new machine with 40 is less than the old Hartford / Meldas, then it's probably going to struggle with the surface milling we do a fair bit of. The Meldas does the job for what we use it for, and we run it with Autodesk Inventor Professional and Fusion 360 CAM programs.

 

[DouglasJRizzo]

We have a 1997 Hartford VMC 850 with a Meldas 520 controller. No books or manuals. How or where would I look to determine what the block look ahead is? Reason for asking is because we are looking at a new machine which only has 40 block look ahead. Being so old I can't imagine the Meldas has a big block look ahead like modern machines, but if the new machine with 40 is less than the old Hartford / Meldas, then it's probably going to struggle with the surface milling we do a fair bit of. The Meldas does the job for what we use it for, and we run it with Autodesk Inventor Professional and Fusion 360 CAM programs.

Mitsu does have online support for their controls and I think you can still download manuals in pdf. Might want to give them a call, as well.