Troubleshooting new-to-me Hitachi Seiki HT-20 with Seiki control

I recently powered up my HT-20, and I'm having a few problems with the control. When I go to auto-program it (conversational), I cannot get it to accept values for raw stock OD, Length, and face distance. It won't go past this point. I have a manual, but cannot find this section.

Also, the "Display" is in inches, but the decimal is shifted 1 space to the right, so 3.0000 inches displays as 30.000. Is there a parameter I can edit to fix this? The iron is in really good shape, but I'm struggling with the control. This is a garage machine, I'm an enginerd, trying to learn. Thank you for any help.

If it's the same control I have. I found a couple YouTube videos that initially helped me out. A guy named Sunpoe or close to that did a great step by step start up and tool offset video.

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Thanks, I'll look him up and see if I find what I need

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Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate the YouTube channel you refer to. I can't seem to find much at all on this control. I did get it to take numbers finally, but it still errors out with "X End Point" incorrect or something. The manual is a poor translation from Japanese I think. I'll keep plugging away.

The control has the Multi Interactive splash screen at start up.

Found Greg at Cyber Machinery Sales. He has manuals and procedures. Got a procedure for resetting the control to factory, fixt both the decimal point and the not taking dimensions. I still need to get a manual for programming so I can figure out how to do the conversational and DNC.(262) 349-6613

B.Reilly01 said:

Found Greg at Cyber Machinery Sales. He has manuals and procedures. Got a procedure for resetting the control to factory, fixt both the decimal point and the not taking dimensions. I still need to get a manual for programming so I can figure out how to do the conversational and DNC.(262) 349-6613

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About what year is yours? Mine is a 1990 and I've figured my way around the conversational programming pretty well I think. When you're drawing your part with the symbol input after you set up your raw material, its expecting you to draw in a ccw direction.

So say for example you're drawing a simple faced and turned part, you start at xz 0, create an arrow up to your desired dimension in x, then you would do an arrow to your left and input your desired z dimension.

The same is true for a part with a thru bore, youd start drawing from your inside diameter closest to your spindle, and work was around it in a ccw direction from inside to outside until you're back at the chuck again.

With a little bit of experimenting, I've figured out how to end up with usable code that requires minimal hand editing to fine tune.

As for the cnc functions, if its like mine, you should be able to press F7 to enter the editing screen while you're in the operation mode and be presented with a menu allowing you to punch programs in or out.

Hope this helps

Rodney

Thanks Rodney,

Mine is a mid-80's, I think 84. It's an old green machine. I got into the conversational last night, and was a little hung up on the fact that the dimensions go in AFTER the drawing. I'm used to a Bridgeport Romi PowerPath, where it's all done numerically. I have a BTR card, but I don't know how to transfer programs over the DB-25 connector. Do you use a specific program or something like a DNC One? I'm learning as much as I can in the time it takes to smoke a cigar in the evenings.

Thank you,
Ben

What controller is your machine based around? Mine is built on top of the Yasnac LX3, so a lot of information is available for the LX3 that doesnt directly apply to Hitachi's custom software layer on top of the Yaskawa hardware, but a lot of things carry over like specifications, G-code lists, and alarm codes. If yours is Yaskawa based, I think 1984 would make it an LX1 which is a different animal than mine.

It sounds like your programming screens differ from mine, as I have the choice for symbolic input that will ask me for the dimensions after I select each action while drawing a part. I can post pictures screen by screen that kind of rough out the process if you'd like.

As for the RS-232, it took me a minute to get it functioning, but it wasnt difficult.

Upon powering up the machine, I am greeted with the Hitachi Interactive screen, followed by this screen. Selecting F3 for operation takes me to this screen :

This is the position screen of the machines operation mode. Pressing F7 for Editing takes me into the following screen for DNC options :


Option 1 will let me send programs to my DNC hub, option 2 will let me receive files from the hub to the machine. The next image is a picture of the first option which will let me send programs. It asks me to confirm whether or not the RS232 settings are correct by pressing F1 for yes, or F2 for no before it will allow me to continue.


Once I select F1 for yes and the have the machine in Edit mode, I'm presented with a prompt stating O= waiting for me to enter the 4 digit program number. Before entering the program number, you must press RESET, or it will not send the file correctly. So after pressing RESET, entering the program number, and pressing WRITE(enter), it will send the file over the RS232 port to your hub on the otherside.

As for the DNC software, I've been using DNC Precision free edition from AGG software with decent success. Its a fairly straight forward program and does what youd expect a DNC program to do. The free version is limited to one machine and has served me well so far in my little shop. I've used it to backup my machines parameters, settings, and part programs, all with pretty good luck. Just make sure to press the reset button on the machine prior to sending programs either way or it will leave you scratching your head.

Hopefully this info helps you out, I'm not sure how much of it will apply if yours is built on the LX1, or if its something Fanuc based with the Hitachi add on software.

-Rodney

Thank you Rodney,

These screens are basically exactly as my screens are. One thing I'm struggling with (besides my health, thus the 2 months since last post) is conversational programming. It appears I finally have the ability to write a program, all the way through, and save it to a program number. After I save it, it says "Program Registered", but when I then go to load the program from memory, I get "Setting Data Error" and a blank program. I feel like I'm missing one small step to actually save the program. The problem I was having with the programming before was the control needing to be reset to factory.

I haven't yet gotten around to setting up DNC, I get maybe a couple hours a week in the shop...