imported_brian_m
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2006
- Location
- Oregon
I'm revisiting the old problem of Fanuc memory cards and I have some success to report.
My machine is a Kent USA mill (Taiwan) which uses a Fanuc Oi-MF control. It is about one year old and it came from the factory with most Fanuc options activated. As with most (all ?) MF controls it has a PCMIA memory slot for use with Compact Flash (CF) cards, these cards can be used for program transfer in and out (I/O) of the CNC memory and they also support DNC operation. The control also supports a USB memory stick for data I/O only with no DNC option. RS232 and ethernet operations are possible but I have not tried to use these options. Coming from a O-MD control it initially felt as though I would never run out of CNC memory - wrong, but I still had Memory Card DNC - right? No, wrong. After a period of use perfectly usable CF cards would mysteriously fail never to be recovered.
As my programs grew to be more and of larger size I had to get the Memory Card problem sorted out so I could continue DNC operation. It was a very deep dive for a beginner but I have had some success. I can now properly reformat a CF card so that the mill recognises it and, as a bonus, I found a way of using an SD card in a CF to SD card adapter to store programs. In fact you can use a micro-SD card in a micro to standard SD card adapter then put the SD card adapter into an SD to CF card adapter before finally putting the CF card adapter into the PCMIA adapter.
This is the important thing that you need to understand. We all know that a Memory Card for Fanuc has to be formatted in FAT16 and that the maximum card size is supposed to be 2 GB. What you may not realise is that there are several more important settings that need to be loaded into the card before it will work correctly. Normally, say in Windows, these extra items are automatically set correctly but Windows settings do not seem to match Fanuc requirements. I will call this overall process that adds the extra items "disk setup" instead of formatting to avoid confusion. So, what about the Fanuc machine based formatting selection? I am not impressed, I will come to this later.
When I describe how I got the formatting to work I will be mentioning several brand name products, please note that I am not promoting these products they are simply what worked for me, other similar products may or may not work.
The first thing to do was to find out how a working memory card was set up, to do this I purchased a Windows program called "MiniTool Partition Wizard" (MTPW), this program allows you to examine disk settings in far greater detail than normal Windows permits. There are similar programs built in Windows and Linux that allow similar disk examinations (Windows = diskpart, Linux=GParted), MTPW just seemed more convenient to use. Unfortunately, the free MTPW does not quite allow all of the processes we need you have to get the paid version ($59).
It was quite easy to see how the disk was setup, what was more difficult was to see which settings were important to Fanuc operation and how the required changes could be made to a new disk. Much experimentation was carried out using different CF cards (and eventually SD cards), different settings for the disk setup and much moving to and from the mill to test the changes.
I will mention at this point that the Fanuc control formatting program does does not appear to make several of the critical changes required in the disk setup which explains why apparently perfectly good memory cards will not work in the mill despite being formatted in the control unit.
If there is any interest let me know and I will continue this report later. Sorry, for now I have some bead-blasting to do.
Brian
My machine is a Kent USA mill (Taiwan) which uses a Fanuc Oi-MF control. It is about one year old and it came from the factory with most Fanuc options activated. As with most (all ?) MF controls it has a PCMIA memory slot for use with Compact Flash (CF) cards, these cards can be used for program transfer in and out (I/O) of the CNC memory and they also support DNC operation. The control also supports a USB memory stick for data I/O only with no DNC option. RS232 and ethernet operations are possible but I have not tried to use these options. Coming from a O-MD control it initially felt as though I would never run out of CNC memory - wrong, but I still had Memory Card DNC - right? No, wrong. After a period of use perfectly usable CF cards would mysteriously fail never to be recovered.
As my programs grew to be more and of larger size I had to get the Memory Card problem sorted out so I could continue DNC operation. It was a very deep dive for a beginner but I have had some success. I can now properly reformat a CF card so that the mill recognises it and, as a bonus, I found a way of using an SD card in a CF to SD card adapter to store programs. In fact you can use a micro-SD card in a micro to standard SD card adapter then put the SD card adapter into an SD to CF card adapter before finally putting the CF card adapter into the PCMIA adapter.
This is the important thing that you need to understand. We all know that a Memory Card for Fanuc has to be formatted in FAT16 and that the maximum card size is supposed to be 2 GB. What you may not realise is that there are several more important settings that need to be loaded into the card before it will work correctly. Normally, say in Windows, these extra items are automatically set correctly but Windows settings do not seem to match Fanuc requirements. I will call this overall process that adds the extra items "disk setup" instead of formatting to avoid confusion. So, what about the Fanuc machine based formatting selection? I am not impressed, I will come to this later.
When I describe how I got the formatting to work I will be mentioning several brand name products, please note that I am not promoting these products they are simply what worked for me, other similar products may or may not work.
The first thing to do was to find out how a working memory card was set up, to do this I purchased a Windows program called "MiniTool Partition Wizard" (MTPW), this program allows you to examine disk settings in far greater detail than normal Windows permits. There are similar programs built in Windows and Linux that allow similar disk examinations (Windows = diskpart, Linux=GParted), MTPW just seemed more convenient to use. Unfortunately, the free MTPW does not quite allow all of the processes we need you have to get the paid version ($59).
It was quite easy to see how the disk was setup, what was more difficult was to see which settings were important to Fanuc operation and how the required changes could be made to a new disk. Much experimentation was carried out using different CF cards (and eventually SD cards), different settings for the disk setup and much moving to and from the mill to test the changes.
I will mention at this point that the Fanuc control formatting program does does not appear to make several of the critical changes required in the disk setup which explains why apparently perfectly good memory cards will not work in the mill despite being formatted in the control unit.
If there is any interest let me know and I will continue this report later. Sorry, for now I have some bead-blasting to do.
Brian
