twmcree
Aluminum
- Joined
- May 9, 2018
- Location
- Austin Texas
Nothing free in this world.. feel the need to contribute back to the forum somehow to pay for the information that it has provided me thus far... Even if the information is extremely trivial relative to many of the informing threads / thread contributions. Got it 10 cents on the dollar I guess, come to think of it.
Anyway... hopefully the following thread will be beneficial to those who are brand new to the wide field of cnc machining... such as myself, as of 10/2018... Learn from any mistakes that I made, or will make in the future
So here is the story:
After spending around a year researching vmc's for a future business venture, I decided that a box-way Fadal was the machine that would fit the bill...
* cheap parts
* common sense troubleshooting
* documentation
* plenty of supply.. Certainly not an orphan machine.
* mucho bang for buck.
*** A mistake I would have made had I not sought advice on this forum was purchasing a dead machine and retrofitting it via Mesa breakout boards and linuxcnc. You're not going to save any money going this route, keep an eye on Craigslist and on upcoming machinery auctions. There are deals to be had... and don't be intimidated by ancient looking consoles.. it is so simple it is stupid.
ie:
Recently a 2000 Fadal 4020HT w/4th axis popped up on Craigslist around 2 hours from my shop near Austin.. all for $7,500. Caught it 22hrs after it had been posted. Must have done something right - everything worked out. A little sooner than expected.. Had to take it on the fly... oh, and never seen a VMC in real life at this point - armed with YouTube and Practical Machinist.
Made pins for rigging counterweight, shoved tools in truck and hauled ass down to Houston for an hour to stumble my way through prepping machine for transport... I had to meet an important client back in Austin that afternoon, so the pressure was really on to get-er-done.
*** the pins to rig the counterweight for transport on this machine need to be 1" diameter in order to go through the hidden hole in rear of machine (for this machine)... oops. Bad information.. should have called fadalcnc or somebody to clearify prior to walking into such an unknown situation.
Had to figure a way around the pin issue, ended up just bolting up pin flanges so that they would hold my 1.5" diameter pins in place.
****** when blocking up head for transport make sure wooden block is under area behind spindle, NOT under spindle nut. Make sure that there is adequet pressure on wooden block so that it does not slip out during transit.. don't want to have counterweight chains break and head/spindle crash into the table.
Fortunately, machine made it home in one piece.
*** To unload, cut out (4) lengths of 3" x 3/16" square tubing to slide through rectangles in casting.
Renting an adequet forklift was an issue do to weather and a formula one race down the road. So she sat undercover on trailer for a couple of weeks..
Couldn't wait to get it off of trailer to fire er up, so I hooked up to a homemade RPC and followed the installation instructions in operators manual for electrical hookup.
*** Gotta make sure that you configure the transformer taps correctly for voltage.
**** Print and bind all manuals applicable to machine off of fadalcnc.com tech docs. Very useful documentation. One reason Fadal is perfect for this sort of scinerio.
Imediately learned the hard way about properly coldstarting a fadal.. There are no hardstops on axis.. only soft stops (software). If you do not properly cold Start, machine does not know where it is at any given time. You will wind up jogging an axis to crash zone. Or two
*** after crashing an axis, take off way covers and check your servo/ballscrew couplers. There needs to be a .005 spacing. Adjustment process is outlined in maintenance manual.
was looking for a 10k skytrack, but only thing available was 8.. as time went on the 8k started to look pretty good... as expected, skytrack didn't have the balls to pick it up single handedly.. improvised with a tractor with ~2.5k capacity on front end. Pretty sketchy there for a minute.
Got er off trailer, used skytrack forks to turn machine around by pushing casting. Once oriented, slid some professional machinery skates ((2)2' landscape timbers with cardboard on backside) under heavy end in order to lift and push into position against wall with skytrack.
*** Moral of story so far, always double check sources of information & coldstart machine properly so that you do not get excited and crash an axis.
Plenty more coming soon - got to get back to work.
Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk
Anyway... hopefully the following thread will be beneficial to those who are brand new to the wide field of cnc machining... such as myself, as of 10/2018... Learn from any mistakes that I made, or will make in the future
So here is the story:
After spending around a year researching vmc's for a future business venture, I decided that a box-way Fadal was the machine that would fit the bill...
* cheap parts
* common sense troubleshooting
* documentation
* plenty of supply.. Certainly not an orphan machine.
* mucho bang for buck.
*** A mistake I would have made had I not sought advice on this forum was purchasing a dead machine and retrofitting it via Mesa breakout boards and linuxcnc. You're not going to save any money going this route, keep an eye on Craigslist and on upcoming machinery auctions. There are deals to be had... and don't be intimidated by ancient looking consoles.. it is so simple it is stupid.
ie:
Recently a 2000 Fadal 4020HT w/4th axis popped up on Craigslist around 2 hours from my shop near Austin.. all for $7,500. Caught it 22hrs after it had been posted. Must have done something right - everything worked out. A little sooner than expected.. Had to take it on the fly... oh, and never seen a VMC in real life at this point - armed with YouTube and Practical Machinist.
Made pins for rigging counterweight, shoved tools in truck and hauled ass down to Houston for an hour to stumble my way through prepping machine for transport... I had to meet an important client back in Austin that afternoon, so the pressure was really on to get-er-done.
*** the pins to rig the counterweight for transport on this machine need to be 1" diameter in order to go through the hidden hole in rear of machine (for this machine)... oops. Bad information.. should have called fadalcnc or somebody to clearify prior to walking into such an unknown situation.
Had to figure a way around the pin issue, ended up just bolting up pin flanges so that they would hold my 1.5" diameter pins in place.
****** when blocking up head for transport make sure wooden block is under area behind spindle, NOT under spindle nut. Make sure that there is adequet pressure on wooden block so that it does not slip out during transit.. don't want to have counterweight chains break and head/spindle crash into the table.
Fortunately, machine made it home in one piece.
*** To unload, cut out (4) lengths of 3" x 3/16" square tubing to slide through rectangles in casting.
Renting an adequet forklift was an issue do to weather and a formula one race down the road. So she sat undercover on trailer for a couple of weeks..
Couldn't wait to get it off of trailer to fire er up, so I hooked up to a homemade RPC and followed the installation instructions in operators manual for electrical hookup.
*** Gotta make sure that you configure the transformer taps correctly for voltage.
**** Print and bind all manuals applicable to machine off of fadalcnc.com tech docs. Very useful documentation. One reason Fadal is perfect for this sort of scinerio.
Imediately learned the hard way about properly coldstarting a fadal.. There are no hardstops on axis.. only soft stops (software). If you do not properly cold Start, machine does not know where it is at any given time. You will wind up jogging an axis to crash zone. Or two
*** after crashing an axis, take off way covers and check your servo/ballscrew couplers. There needs to be a .005 spacing. Adjustment process is outlined in maintenance manual.
was looking for a 10k skytrack, but only thing available was 8.. as time went on the 8k started to look pretty good... as expected, skytrack didn't have the balls to pick it up single handedly.. improvised with a tractor with ~2.5k capacity on front end. Pretty sketchy there for a minute.
Got er off trailer, used skytrack forks to turn machine around by pushing casting. Once oriented, slid some professional machinery skates ((2)2' landscape timbers with cardboard on backside) under heavy end in order to lift and push into position against wall with skytrack.
*** Moral of story so far, always double check sources of information & coldstart machine properly so that you do not get excited and crash an axis.
Plenty more coming soon - got to get back to work.
Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk
