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Gotta love this forum, [programming help rant etc]

gustafson

Diamond
Joined
Sep 4, 2002
Location
People's Republic
Now I have been for years describing manuals for Asian equipment as making your eyes bleed but the information is in there

Karma is a bitch

but PM to the rescue

Subprogram Problems on a TC-S2A


Once I read the post by angelw the information in the manual makes sense


Now it is bad enough to learn a new programing language after almost 30 years of Heidenhain, but while learning on a new machine entirely...

[Oh yeah I got a new Speedio]

The German manuals I have often said are pretty, the English is perfect, pictures, code examples, but frequently there will be important pieces of information just not there.

The Brother, what 4, 5 manuals, not an index among them.

sigh

Oh, and I have 12 hours a day of work to do in between trying to figure this out

I have often said I am retarded from using Heidenhain for so long I never needed CAM, and didn't get it till maybe 5 years ago.

But now I know why

Holy crap, in 1988 you could walk up to a Heidenhain and punch in a simple drill program and have perfect executable code in a few minutes. G Code or Conversational.

Perfect syntactically correct code. Sure your numbers could be wrong, but the code would run

Not picking on Brother at all, I think all these machines are like this, what exactly is the point of allowing bad syntax?

This is like going from a iphone 12 to PC DOS 1.0


Well, it is fun watching it drill holes at 20k rpm.

Yeah, starting slow.
 
I hear ya, I learned on older Fanuc machines but the first higher end machine I used with probing, tool setters etc was a Heidenhain. Then we got another newer machine with a Fanuc 31i and it's hard to believe how cumbersome using some of that stuff is. Definitely spoiled with the Heidenhain
 
Just wait till you buy fanuc. Then you can experience true misery. Sure there is lots of info out there but the brand new controls I think are just 1990s old stock with a new lcd on them.

Glad to know there is someone who like Heidenhain. All the machinery salesman I’ve talked to when buying a new machine say not to touch heidenhain or seimens and that the fanuc is great…. I guess I’ll have to stick to Mazak for now until a good deal on a heidenhain comes up. As seems only pricey machines come with a heidenhain attached
 
…….All the machinery salesman I’ve talked to when buying a new machine say not to touch heidenhain or seimens and that the fanuc is great….

That’s because they don’t like hearing from dissatisfied customers that there is no longer support for older (10+ or so years) controls.
 
Just wait till you buy fanuc. Then you can experience true misery. Sure there is lots of info out there but the brand new controls I think are just 1990s old stock with a new lcd on them.

Glad to know there is someone who like Heidenhain. All the machinery salesman I’ve talked to when buying a new machine say not to touch heidenhain or seimens because I sell only the fanuc, its great…. I guess I’ll have to stick to Mazak for now until a good deal on a heidenhain comes up. As seems only pricey machines come with a heidenhain attached
Fixed that for ya.
 
I think the older Fanuc manuals were better. They kind of had a flow to them. The newer stuff has all the info in there, but it's not in any real order.

When I get a new machine I skim through all the manuals page by page. Helps to develop the table of contents in my head.
 
That’s because they don’t like hearing from dissatisfied customers that there is no longer support for older (10+ or so years) controls.

This is not at all true.

Fanuc sure supports their controls forever, if you consider thousands of dollars for a board support. Maybe if a fortune 500 company has a giant G&L with a 40 year old Fanuc they think that is valid support, but it isn't in any real way.

Heidenhain has always had the finest support out there. They were supporting mid 80s controls about 10 years ago. When I bought my R2C3 in 1992 they gave me new firmware on EPROMS. gratis. Please send the old EPROMs back cause we can't get them anymore. See what Fanuc gives you for free.

I know they support the control on my DMG which is now 18 years old[how time flies]

They would talk to you about anything for free. Rick has retired I guess, and Mark was there forever.

Truth is I bought the Brother because of their reputation for support.

And the speed.
2G acceleration, 2 second tool change and 27k spindle

Looks to be about 1/3-1/4 the time on some drilled and tapped parts from a machine that can drill a hole and move to the next location in less than a second
 
Well, my most recent Heidenhain experiences are getting sort of dated since I’ve been retired for about 8 years now. At the shop I retired from we had a presetter that used a Heidenhain board in a PC to read the scales and provide data for the presetter software. The board died at about 10 years old. A replacement was NLA. A substitute board was available, but with a different bus. That required a new PC. The original software did not work with the drivers tor the substitute board. So a failure and lack of support for an older board resulted in pretty much replacing the entire system hardware and software and much downtime.

An acquaintance has a small mill with Accurite (owned by Heidenhain) control. The LCD display failed at about 4 years. The offered solution was to buy the entire new operation panel and display for a few thousand dollars.

These are the most recent experiences I draw on that shape my opinion of poor longterm support.
 
The Brother, what 4, 5 manuals, not an index among them.

Glad you are having success with drilling and tapping Gustafson. The 27K spindle is very nice. In regards to the manuals, they are not perfect, but they are pretty good imo. Each manual has a table of contents at the beginning. Some of the manuals have a huge 'safety' section first. I usually put a sticky note 'tab' on the table of contents to quickly get to it. We also have pdf versions you can have that have contents bookmarked and are searchable. Let me know if you need help getting those.
 
Glad you are having success with drilling and tapping Gustafson. The 27K spindle is very nice. In regards to the manuals, they are not perfect, but they are pretty good imo. Each manual has a table of contents at the beginning. Some of the manuals have a huge 'safety' section first. I usually put a sticky note 'tab' on the table of contents to quickly get to it. We also have pdf versions you can have that have contents bookmarked and are searchable. Let me know if you need help getting those.

Yeah, well a table of contents is not an index. I have several of the manuals in PDF, but the computer is not on the shop floor.
 
Yeah, well a table of contents is not an index. I have several of the manuals in PDF, but the computer is not on the shop floor.

How can you run without a computer right at the machine. I’ve done it so long like that I can’t even understand there is not a computer and 3 screens ready to go.
Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
How can you run without a computer right at the machine. I’ve done it so long like that I can’t even understand there is not a computer and 3 screens ready to go.
Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Its called having a heidenhain control with every program I have written for the last 15 years on it, and the ethernet is connected to the office to backup just in case.

Seriously, before last month there was zero reason to have a computer anywhere near the machine. Unless I want more convenient access to Pandora to change the music
 
I am simply stunned at the Neanderthal nature of the operator interface.

I really truly now understand how people program the simplest of parts in CAD/CAM.

My manuals are increasingly becoming covered in obscenity laden corrections and clarifications.

How bad are they? I am reading Haas' online documentation to figure out certain G code functionality

Explanation of 'D' argument in G12[page 3-26 section 3.3.3]:
Specify compensation amount
Compensation amount is commanded by tool number

Uhh, yeah, that is meaningful
AM I entering the tool number? which the machine already knows?
Or am I adding an amount on top of the tool radius, or diameter, or what?

'compensation amount' implies a numerical value, a dimension

Just... I dunno.....
 
How can you run without a computer right at the machine. I’ve done it so long like that I can’t even understand there is not a computer and 3 screens ready to go.
Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I think 80% of the work I do on my mill turn never sees a computer.

Easily do milling.

Not hard to set up some bar pulling and both turrets.

Honestly not even that difficult to do simultaneous machines with both turrets and both heads. I actually don’t know how to do this in gcode. I also don’t really have great cam software

I think it’s just impossible on a fanuc to do the same. But there are other options that don’t tie you into requiring a computer
 
You mean 'external' computer, I am guessing ? 'cuz if you were running straight nc, you'd be singing a different tune :D

Yes because In reality all machines nowadays have a computer in them. But I was referring to the other poster talking about you needed a computer.
 
Ok I will have to post a pic
f5596f31fd54704ba0b5f61ceddc51b1.jpg
ok so from the control this is no problem to program. Standing at the machine all day to get this going and not make any scrap parts of course it’s 17-4 with certs. I don’t care what control it is.
Don


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 








 
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