The Home Machinist!

Is anyone running (or for that matter have knowledge of) a Fanuc Tape Cut Model M wire EDM?? For no particular reason I have recently acquired one (yet to be delivered) and it would be nice to know what issues I'm going to have!

This is not for business use - just me playing, and although I have a sinker EDM (Eurospark 425) I have no experience of wire EDM (which is why I got it)

AWEM

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Andrew Mawson
Battle, East Sussex, UK

I used to run a couple of Elox wire EDM's that were equipped with Fanuc controllers and tape readers. Are we talikng about the same thing?

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Doug Di Natale
Mid-MO

No, not ELOX.

FANUC actually manufactures and sells WEDM machines under their name, with (naturally) a FANUC control.

Until you find out how / if the machine runs, you will not have any idea what problems you are going to have.

It's a bit like asking 'how long is a string'?

Mechanical problems (with servos / screws) are rare, since they see no load.

Electronic problems with the control are equally rare, since a good FANUC control can run for decades.

Problems with the mechanics / electrical items used to feed / guide the wire are more common, mostly because people don't always keep them up to snuff, and things do wear out. Worn out guides and / or contacts (that put the power in the wire) are most common. Guides are not cheap...and if they are worn, accuracy is virtually impossible to maintain.

Problems with the power supply for the wire are not unheard of.

If I remember correctly, mid 1980's manufacture.

I think they had submerged as opposed to pressure flush (but I might be wrong - it's been a while). If it is a tank machine, expect leaky seals, which are easy to fix.

You also need very clean / controlled water - so if there is a problem with the water treatment system, that will need to be fixed.

Ahhh The "M".

It has a Large work area and was good for burning dies for large roasting pans.
It does not have a tank or run submerged, just a set of plexiglass splash shields. The flush pumps are not really high powered.
We did build fixtures from aluminum and plexiglass that mounted to bridge tooling with a plastic follower underneath that allowed us to stack parts and cut submerged
Unlike many other Wire EDMs the wire feeds from the bottom up to a take up reel. Threading can be a challenge at first
It uses round diamond wire guides but also came with a set of Vee guides which allow the use of a size wire you don't have the round guides for in a pinch. They are not as accurate.
The Z -axis is a hand crank with a pinch lock. You have to enter taper parameters of the Z position by hand. There is no electronic reference to the controller.
It's easy to hook a large swimming pool filter canister between the machine and the DI unit as a pre-filter to extend the life of the 5 or 10 micron filters in the DI unit
The machine is no fire breather but I have nothing but fond memories of the 5 years I worked with one.
We had a home brew 5 skim routine that we used to make punches for precision stamping dies that gave us better results than even our AGIEs , in not much more time.
They have a ceramic mounting plate for the electrodes, pulleys and guides that can break and these may be hard to find.
The buttons on the controller have little lights behind them that burn out so sometimes you don't know if a mode is on.

Anyway, good luck and I hope it works well for you.

Tim

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Illigitimi non Carborundum
'96 Birmingham mill, Enco 13x40 GH and Craftsman 6x18 lathes, Reid 2C surface grinder. Duro Bandsaw and lots of tooling from 30+ years in the trade. Now I boil oil.

Thanks Tim for the encouragement!

It arrives on Monday so I suppose I'll have a few days figuring out how to commission it. Tell me more about the de-ionised water it uses as electrolyte. I understand that there is a resin tower in the machine that keeps the tank de-ionised, but do I have to fill i with de-ionised water initially, or will it sort it self out with tap water?

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Andrew Mawson
Battle, East Sussex, UK

You start with reasonably good tap water, the resin tank, assuming it is still good, will sort it out.

If your water has other junk in it, you may be in trouble.

The resin tanks, for example, are not particularly good at getting out sulfur or high iron, so depending on what you have in your tap water, you might need to find another source.

Well, she arrived on Monday - quite a whopper to get off the lorry (40 foot curtain sider) - luckily I'd asked a friend to bring his JCB Loadall telehandler with long forks to help. One support leg had been whacked on loading (20mm stud bent over 90 degrees) but otherwise ok.

Reassembled and plumbed all the water tank bits, set too hoovering out masses of nasty black crud from the cabinets (no air filter in the cabinet door just a hole!), connected to 3 phase and fired her up. No major horrors a few minor wire feed issues due to missadjustment, but all now working. Even managed to cut a test piece from a program that was already in (bubble) memory.

Tomorrows task: get the RS232 connection working to the computer so I can use a cam package. Quite pleased really!

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Andrew Mawson
Battle, East Sussex, UK

Sounds Good !

I remember that the RS232 hookup was kind of strange, but back then there were few standards. We used a breakout box and when we finally got the combination that worked we put a couple cables together with the soldering gun. I remember 9600 baud as working well. No parity. One stop bit. Honestly it's been so long and I don't have any documentation. Do you have a FANUC manual for it ?
We used SmartCam which was a great CAM program in those days with a good CNC Editor and a communications program too.
Funny, I still have tape cartridge backups with CAD files and coded programs from the late 80s / early 90/s but no tape reader to access them.

Looking forward to hearing how it works out.

Tim

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Illigitimi non Carborundum
'96 Birmingham mill, Enco 13x40 GH and Craftsman 6x18 lathes, Reid 2C surface grinder. Duro Bandsaw and lots of tooling from 30+ years in the trade. Now I boil oil.

Yes I have incredibly tatty copies of the operators and maintenance manuals. All discussion in them naturally centres round tape readers and tape punches. It has the tape reader but no punch (anyone got a Facit 4070?) There is a 25 way D type socket under the paper tape reader that I assume (dangerous!) is an RS232 port, also on one of the pages I can view on the Fanuc controller there are parameters to change input to a different source. There is a hand written sketch one one manual of an RS232 cable with pin numbers.

Any idea if you can dump programs as well as load via the RS232? Infact any vague memories that you may have of using the RS232 would be appreciated!

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Andrew Mawson
Battle, East Sussex, UK

Andrew.

On my CNC mill Fanuc based control I have an RS232 port that I upload and download programs. These are basically text files and I use a simple (but old) xtalk program to set up the communication link. Does your control have a com port setup? You will need to match the control com to your computer com port. The RS232 cable only uses 5 of the pins in the plug. I am not sure I have a diagram anymore as mine was also copied and sent to me via fax. The kind of fax that was printed on that heat sensitive shiny paper. Remember those?

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Bruce Mowbray
Springville & Southern RR
TMB Manufacturing & Locomotive Works

I remember that our cable at the back of the PC was a 9 pin connector and the one at the machine tool was a 25 pin.

Bruce's comment about the 5 wires also rings true and I remember 2 of the wires were "twisted".
Those wires went to a A>B and B>A type arrangement. Just which 2 wires I forget.

Be very careful changing parameters. Make sure you copy all the current info before making any changes.


These guys were a great help when we had our FANUCS running after ELOX stopped their support.
That was 20 years ago at a company called Intricate Wire Cut in Paterson , New Jersey.
Who knows, maybe they could fax you a cable diagram and the parameter info..

Sunbelt Machine Inc
5801 Orr Road
Charlotte, NC 28213-6461
Phone: (704) 596-7905

Tim

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Illigitimi non Carborundum
'96 Birmingham mill, Enco 13x40 GH and Craftsman 6x18 lathes, Reid 2C surface grinder. Duro Bandsaw and lots of tooling from 30+ years in the trade. Now I boil oil.

2 to 3 and 3 to 2.

Dunno how "universal" serial communications are, but this is what got my computer to talk to my controllers (not Fanuc)

Pretty standard configuration it seems.

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Glenn

Operating machines is perfectly safe......until you forget how dangerous it really is!