Format a Data Card on a Fanuc Control yes that’s what were going to do. Now first of all I have a confession to make.
People often say to me how nice it is of me to write all these articles helping people with the shit they can’t do. Well sorry it’s not true actually I’m just a selfish bastard just like all the rest if you.
My only reason is that I have and always have had the memory of a goldfish. If you have ever had a goldfish and tried to train it (which I once did). I read books on it like “How to Train Your Goldfish in 3 Easy Steps”, for which I got a refund.
Anyway I digress. The reason you can’t train them is, not least of all because you can’t keep them out of the water too long, but they don’t remember a word you say. Fuck all, Jack shit.
So the minute they learn a nice trick they immediately forget it. It doesn’t bother them because they just forget that it bothered them.
Sorry no more about Goldfish.
Anyway its really easy to Format a Data Card on a Fanuc Control. You just hold in these two babies while switching it on.
Memory Card on a Fanuc control, today I’m being totally selfish so please don’t read this article, it’s just for me.
I had this idea a while back. Every time I find something on a machine that I might forget, I would write a post about it.
Easy, when I google something it’s me.
In fact I get really pissed off now if I google something to do with CNC machines and I don’t find my own article.
These are things I don’t want to forget but usually do.
Now I don’t mean stuff like shitting at the back of someone’s filing cabinet or nicking the soap out of the toilets.
No no no I mean stuff like Fanuc Parameters that I might forget or little tricks n tips on some obscure control.
I mean sometimes I just want to forget everything but we wont talk about that in case you do want to use me for training.
I know I’m old and decrepit but in fact I’ve always had a bad memory.
I’ve always lost things. My mate used to say to me “you’d lose your bollocks if they weren’t in a sack”
He was a Brummie and he had a way with words (bless you Roy if you’re out there).
Where the fuck did this idea come from that Brummies are thick? My mate Eddie had this incredibly sharpe witt. Oh and he could fix anything, many a time I called him out to fix my old mini van.
It broke down everyday so I relied on him quite a lot.
I mean posh people break down in their cars and don’t have a fuckin clue what to do. I mean if you were on a dessert island who would you want with you Jacob Rees-Mog and Boris Johnson or my two mates Eddie and Roy.
I mean Eddie would build you a raft in 20 minutes and Roy could build a mud hut quicker than DIY SOS. Oh and he could fish too so you’d have a hot meal.
Boris would be reciting Shakespeare and Jacob would be reading from the bible and asking for his butler.
Save Offsets Siemens 828, I often see my job as a trainer as the bloke who works out what those odd buttons do. You know, the one you see every day but never dared press it because it might cause your machine to implode and completely destroy itself.
This is the chappie his name is Archive but he does other things other than what it says on his tin so to speak.
If you dare to press him you have the luxury of being able to save all your offset and tools related to your program and you will be blessed with special powers, a bit like Spiderman but without all those sticky bits of thread.
“How cool is that”
What you Do to Save Offsets Siemens 828
First of all you will need to be in Program Manager.
You should then be able to see this screen.
Now press the button.
You will now have the option to press
So go ahead press it.
From the dropdown boxes you can chose what you want to save.
Press OK and everything will be saved in a file which has the same name as your program flowed by TMZ. Not sure what that means but it contains all your shit.
So that’s good (Save Offsets Siemens 828) isn’t it?
It has the extension INI.
My program was FACEMILL so it added FAEMILL_TMZ.INI
So now it’s easy. When you want to recall this information just open the file (much like you open a program) and there it is.
Just click OK and your data is all reloaded.
Save this file with your program and everything you need is there. Don’t you just love that??
I know I do.
This is Storm, a friend of mine. He’s only a boy but when he grows up he’ll be a tiger.
Sorry but did I mention my 5 star reviews?
I really am far too shy to do this but the wife will kill me if I don’t.
This week I got to train two people on a Haas VF3, and what a delight it was. This machine was old I mean 1996 but still a great functional machine tool.
I like to see myself in a similar way, really old but still functioning, well at least as I write.
It took me back to when I first set up my business of training people on CNC machines. My first two victims were at Armitage Shanks in good old Wolverhampton.
1996 was the year I started out on my own CNC Training and these were the first machines I trained on. I did so many I got pissed off with the sound of my own voice (which I rarely do).
Because all the machines were the same I was saying the same things and quoting the same tired old anecdotes day after day.
Fortunately, I went on to train on all the well-known CNC machines like Mazak, Mori Seiki, Matsuura, Bridgeport to name a few. Quite a lot of the not so well-known ones like Maho, seen below.
The machine above has a Phillips control and they were the absolute dogs’ bollocks. It even had rigid tapping. You could hit feed-hold while it was tapping and you got the option to reverse the tap out! Training people on these was an absolute delight.
Don’t forget we’re talking mid 80s here.
Shut up David this sounds like a big plug for the CNC Training Centre, or maybe it is.
CNC Training Centre (Home of the CNC Program)
There is pub by us and on the sign, it says “The Home of the Roast”.
You have to queue up to get your food and a young lad carves the meat in front of you. If he don’t like the look of you, which obviously with me he didn’t, you get two or three slices of turkey, so wafer thin, you can see the pattern on the fuckin plate underneath.
Now I don’t want to knock the people of Nuneaton, being as most of my family live there, but honestly there are some greedy bastards about.
After you get your meat and a few accoutrements you follow a long line of people adding cabbage and peas and all sorts of vegetables and potatoes to their plates. This bloke in front of me was scooping so much on to his plate it was flowing over. It was like a fuckin bowler hat as my late father would say, sans expletive.
In those days you didn’t swear in front of ladies, unless of course it was their turn.
I was just thinking “did you like not eat for a fuckin week?” You can imagine his kids at school saying to the teacher “oh, we’re not eating at our house this week miss”. The teacher then asks if this is some precursor to a religious festival or some such thing.
“Oh no miss, we’re booked in at the carvery for Sunday lunch” she gives them a knowing nod.
Anyway, I looked at this blokes plate with utter middle class disgust and vowed never to go there again.
My mate was about three people in front of this bloke and to my amazement my mate’s plate was so full of food, it made his look like he’d paid for the children’s menu.
Haas Programming, the Haas CNC control is very similar to Fanuc and all other ISO type controls. There are settings that you can alter to change its behaviour. This means that you can get it to perform in a similar way to your other controls.
It is really useful if you need to be able to transfer programs from one machine to the other. It is well worth taking the time to get all your controls to function in the same way.
That is probably the major downfall in using some of the special features that different controls have. It is always worth considering this if you are using some unique feature. It may not work on your other controls.
This is why a lot of people use the ISO option on a Mazatrol (Mazak) machine. It means that you can take programmes from your Fanuc or Haas machine and run them on your Mazak. With careful consideration to all your controls this flexibility can be achieved.
Learning Haas Programming
The Haas control for example has a corner rounding feature whereby you programme a shape as if it has no corner radii. You then add the corners on as an afterthought.
Personally although this sounds very useful in practice it isn’t that common for a drawing to show intersection points. I think the best use is on a square shape. You might want to use it on a square shape to just break the edges. Certainly when Turning it is very useful for breaking sharp edges.
At the CNC Training Centre we can teach you on or offsite. So we could visit you and offer a training course to suit your individual needs. Alternatively if you want to escape your busy day-to-day environment then a classroom training course may be more suitable.
Haas Programming on the Job
Another way to train is to produce an actual part as we train. This has a lot of advantages.
You end up with a template part and program that you can use for other jobs.
Minimum production loss.
Problems are identified as they occur.
You make mistakes and increase learning speed.
Weakness in knowledge are recognised as they manifest.
