Mazak has officially ruined fanuc for me.

Hey I'm David new member from Houston. Been machining about 14 yrs now. Cnc/manual lathe. Over 13 on fanuc mostly
canned cycle and variable programming recently took a new job offer running and programming mazak qt nexus 400 and m5 fusion, (using mazatrol conversational)no experience on job training. Been there almost 2 months and I'm officially programming and troubleshooting programs no help. It has ruined fanuc for me. How much further mazak is in quality and user friendly control/ software compared to fanuc is just astounding. Never thought I'd be saying this but fanuc is kinda in the dark ages if you ask me. The only thing that comes close in my opinion is okuma with there igf. I'm I the only one who feels this way? Just wanted to introduce myself and put this out there.

I have been running Mazaks for some 30 years. Great for simple stuff, but not so much for real complex stuff, and definitely no 5 axis stuff.

What Gobo said ... BUT most work I see can be done easily with Mazatrol.

I was the same at my work. First 16 years of my career was programming fanuc mills and lathes by hand then my company bought 10 new mazak’s and after only a week of training I was doing everything by myself and never want to touch fanuc again. Mazatrol is perfect for us since we do basic 2D work and no complex 3D or 5 axis stuff which mazatrol is useless for.

Yeah I'll never go back to fanuc. I can write a mazatrol program from scratch for a bit sub with a ph6 hydrill connection and a bore in 3 min? Fanuc 15-20 min? That's just the way it is. Also owner just got quoted on a mill with smooth control! Haven't ran em yet.... how are they??

Bediasdave84 said:

Yeah I'll never go back to fanuc. I can write a mazatrol program from scratch for a bit sub with a ph6 hydrill connection and a bore in 3 min? Fanuc 15-20 min? That's just the way it is. Also owner just got quoted on a mill with smooth control! Haven't ran em yet.... how are they??

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Smooth control is "fancy" and all, but if you are familiar with the older controls it will take some getting used to. That said, cam programming is the way to go IMO!!

Gobo said:

Great for simple stuff, but not so much for real complex stuff, and definitely no 5 axis stuff.

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Use Mazatrol for it's strength, and then calling G code subroutines to do the complex and 5 axis stuff.

Best of both worlds.

I've been programming Mazatrol lathes for about 23 years now and still love it. Feels like cheating compared to G-code.

The Smooth controls are pretty nice. Took me about a week to get used to the touch screen interface, but it will spoil you.

Bediasdave84 said:

Also owner just got quoted on a mill with smooth control! Haven't ran em yet.... how are they??

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Smooth is nice. We have a Bartac with that controller. Pretty much standard 80/20 rule. The touch screen is addictive.