What's your reason for not having a current backup of all your parameters?

Something I have wondered for a long time......

It's not that hard to do.
It's pretty critical to the long term operation of most machines.

Why do so many folks not do it?

Cause they believe that something 'bad' would never happen until it does.

That's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.

Not necessarily laziness, just bigger fish to fry. Like students, business owners operate from crisis to crisis. PM takes a back seat until we’re a much larger firm.

Thanks for reminding me. Going to punch the Fadal params to USB Monday AM.

A very good question.

Let me respond to the question with a question. Why the risk of losing parameters? Why is that not something the Fanuc has addressed in 40 years?

R

litlerob1 said:

A very good question.

Let me respond to the question with a question. Why the risk of losing parameters? Why is that not something the Fanuc has addressed in 40 years?

R

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All Fanuc versions that used Bubble Memory (6, 11,and 12 series) did not use batteries and had essentially zero risk of losing parameters. Bubble is expensive, slow and long obsolete. On the other series, I have no knowledge of why they use SRAM over other memory types.

I know some Mits versions use a hard disk. Pretty good, but not infallible. I'm no fan since when they fail Mits want an arm and 3 legs for a new one. The last OSP I worked was the 5020 so don't know what they use in newer models.

Flash has a finite number of erase/write cycles. Might not be ideal for longevity.

Anyway, the question was meant to be more of a prod to folks to get a backup done, not discuss hardware design. Seems like there has been 3 or so threads in the past week from folks looking for parameters. An absolutely 100% avoidable mess to put oneself into.

LockNut said:

As an applications engineer, we happen upon these small tidbits of info now and then that can make life easier for some of us and save huge headaches down the line. The below is valid but I would preface this with a stern test,test,test. Backup your parameters in the normal way first before doing this. One reason for doing this besides it simply being invisible is in case your manual backup files get misplaced or corrupted.

I’ve been informed by Fanuc that the i Series of CNCs, (both 0 and 30) can be set to back up its parameters automatically to a CMOS.

Parameter 10340 bits 0,1,and 2 must be a “1” OiD&F and 30 series

Parameter 10341 is the number of days between backups – i.e. 90, 120, 360, 180, etc. OiD&F and 30 series.

Parameter 10342 is the number of backups saved, such as the last 2, etc. This is usually set to a “2”

In response to an excellent question, should you find it necessary to actually retrieve the data saved, it is done by accessing the machine’s boot menu, hold the two right most soft keys while starting the machine.

Going to “SRAM DATA UTILITY” and then “retrieve backup”.

The data is held in inverse order, so file #1 is the most recent, #2 is the second most, etc.. Not valid for OiD&F

Paul

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I don't know why folks don't do backups more often especially when how big a mess you'll be in if something takes a poop. My guess is maybe not everyone is confident in the ability to do a total system backup. I'm not sure I know exactly how to do one myself?

Paul posted this a while back. I guess its only the Fanuc i series way it sounds but I thought it sounded handy as hell for folks that forget to do them regularly.

Brent

I don't know for other machines, but Haas gives you (at least 10 years back or so) a USB with the parameters/important stuff on them. But like Brent said, not sure I would know how to do it even if it crashed?

Backups and batteries.
I've got backups in a couple places for each cnc.
Any new machine should get backed up by the tech once he's done doing his tweaks during install.

I forgot how to download or even find the 9000 parameters on a Fanuc. I have an OT and a 21T anyone, know how to find them? I think I have them on a build sheet somewhere but one was changed when I removed a bar feeder. I noticed they didn't down load on either of the machines.

P.S. I just checked my parameter files, looks like the 21T shows a couple ones that begin with 90** the OT doesn't show any. A parameter file for a 16T I scrapped shows a bunch of 90**s.

Dont know. Some things just dont seem important till something goes wrong. Of course, then its too late. My brother has a 1998 or so Excel mill that I tried to back up parameters on for him but we couldnt get it to wkrk with a flash card, had to get a powered sram card. He never got around to getting one and last week something died in the control. Machine powers on but control doesnt. He is worried its dead forever now.

yardbird said:

I don't know why folks don't do backups more often especially when how big a mess you'll be in if something takes a poop. My guess is maybe not everyone is confident in the ability to do a total system backup. I'm not sure I know exactly how to do one myself?

Paul posted this a while back. I guess its only the Fanuc i series way it sounds but I thought it sounded handy as hell for folks that forget to do them regularly.

Brent

Click to expand...

I wish we had an IT forum for stuff like this!

I don't know jack about that end of computing, but I'd sure love to and even more so if it's explained by PM people.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Backups...

Vancbiker said:

Something I have wondered for a long time......

It's not that hard to do.
It's pretty critical to the long term operation of most machines.

Why do so many folks not do it?

Click to expand...

I worked in the computer industry for over 40 years. Two favorite sayings:

"Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups." And,

"I thought *you* made the backups!"

Computer systems fail. When they do, backups can save your bacon. When I was in IT, I had a full set of backup tapes in my locked desk, in addition to the ones in the tape library, and those that went to Iron Mountain once a week.

For the same reason you don't backup other stuff.
Failures are rare so until you get burned it not a priority and even then over time the pain gets forgotten with time.
I should know better on all my systems but I don't do it often enough.

In the case of a cnc machine tool in many cases I think there are many who just don't know how to do it or restore this.
Turn the switch on and it knows who it is and how to run. We take this for granted as it works day in and out.
Bob

I am now fully backed up, but what prompted it was a low battery alarm on one machine. The reason I waited so long was:
1) I didn't know how to do it.
2) I didn't have communication software that would download more than 500 lines of code.
3) Scared I would screw something up when everything was working fine.

I back up my control when I remember... I have, I think, two backups since it was installed in March.

I am pretty good about protecting data, though. I have a server at my shop with dual hard drives mirrored in RAID1 (software RAID in Windows). I use iDrive to back up that volume to the cloud incrementally as files change during use. iDrive supports versioning with up to 30 previous file versions, so I can "go back in time" and get older versions of files if I accidentally overwrite something.

I transfer all my files to the CNC control using FTP from my desktop. The files are stored on the network server, so they are backed up. And my desktop computer has dual SSD's in mirrored RAID1 too.

If my machine died and needed redone from scratch, I could be back up and running within a couple hours or less at most. I would just need to re-touch off all my tools which takes 1min, 50 seconds with my tool setter probe, and re-pick up my WCS which would take a few minutes with the spindle probe.

My biggest risk is some sort of ransomware that got to the server and to the backups and cloud if I didn't have access to enough previous revisions of the files. I really should do a periodic backup and bring it home... but like with most stuff, if it isn't easy, people don't do it.

I encourage anyone who doesn't have good backups to think what you would do if there were a fire in your shop, or someone broke in and stole all your computer equipment. Would you be screwed? Out of business? How long would it take you to be back up and running?

Hard drives have a fixed lifespan, they aren't designed to last forever. Many die within the first few years. Hard drives are very cheap, there is zero reason not to be backing up your stuff. Cloud storage is really cheap too - zero reason not to be backing your stuff up to the cloud too.

our 6 month old Okuma M560 was down last week due to a corrupt CFast card,
Thay had to replace the card, reinstall windows/osp and re enter all the parameters.

Oh, and as for Fanuc... it's borderline negligence that they aren't putting a very simple and cheap F-RAM chip in their controls. Same with the other guys. A 2 megabyte F-RAM chip is about 4 bucks in single quantities from the electronics distributors. They don't require batteries and they retain their programmed information for many decades at room temperature. There is zero reason for NC controls not to have internal backups for their critical information.

SRT Mike said:

.....

I encourage anyone who doesn't have good backups to think what you would do if there were a fire in your shop, or someone broke in and stole all your computer equipment. Would you be screwed? .....

Click to expand...

If there was a big fire in my shop all the machines end up in the scrap bin and replaced with new so backup for them not a problem.
Office and engineering files much more of a problem.
Bob

I have mine backed up, one of the first things I did when I got it powered up. But I am not as diligent about backing up the pc's...

Anyway, somewhat on topic, I am looking at a same MTB machine with a Fanuc OM on it. Best guess is the batteries are dead. From pics it has the factory manuals which if like my current machines should include a paper copy of the parameters. So, my question is, what does it take to load the parameters on an OM from paper?

How many people verify if the backup is valid?

A significant number of backups are invalid even though they are reported as being okay and complete.