[MauserBob]

Good morning, folks.

We have a VF-3 in our shop that has 3 VQC programs in memory. We bought the machine new in December '05 and have never used the VQC progs in the 6 years we've had the machine. We are not DNC-capable so we keep as many of our regularly-running part progs stored in machine memory but recently we found ourselves with a massive program (677 kb) that will not fit in the machine without stripping the memory down to bare bones and even then I'm still 120k shy of what I need. We used to have just over 100 progs stored in memory which left only 19% free space but now we're literally down to the bottom of the barrel with only 10 or so still stored, including spindle warmup, etc, and surprisingly the machine says that we've only got 54% memory free now. What we've got left loaded in there probably doesn't add up to 20 k. This is alarming to me, so, basically I decided to take a look at the VQC progs and discovered that they're enormous, even as basic templates. The first one ( #9997 ) is 137 k, the second one ( #9999 ) is 28 k and the third one ( #11111 ) is 145 k which all adds up to 310 k. Getting rid of those progs would solve my problem at a stroke but I'm reluctant to do so since the rule of thumb (at least as I was taught) is that you leave 9000-range progs alone since they're usually important machine-parameter progs like tool-change subroutines and whatnot. I did download them into my PC for backup in case I can dump them but I won't dump 'em until and if I know that I can do so safely.

Sorry for the verbosity...any thoughts, anyone? Can I get rid of those progs if we never use them, or should I leave them alone? Here are the progs, listed by header name, in case it helps:

1.) O09997
(HAAS VQC Mill, English, Inch, V1.4A)
(11/14/01)

2.) O09999
(HAAS Mill Menu QC ver. 2.8)
(07/14/01)

3.) O11111
(HAAS VQC Mill, English, Inch, V1.4A)
(11/14/01)

Thank you in advance, guys. And by the by, I realize that it seems as if we have two of the same prog loaded ( 9997 and 11111 ), but I have no idea why that is since, as I said earlier, we've never used them. They came pre-loaded from the HFO, and I do believe that our machine was the floor-demo at our local machinery house so that may explain it.


Rob.

[WallyL7]

I thought the regular memory was about 1.5megs?(about the size of an old floppy - if you'll pardon the expression)

677kb isn't a huge program by any stretch. I would say that anything in the O9000's should be left alone. But anything else can be deleted at your discretion.

You can always just backup the remaining (10) programs (leaving the 9000's in) and re-load them if you need to.


It looks like if you just get rid of #11111 you may have the room?

[KenFoulks]

You've already backed them up, delete them.

[MauserBob]

Thank you for the responses, guys. I dumped 'em, gained a ton of room.

WallyL7, no, 677k isn't big by most standards but we mostly run flat panels that are programmed in MC-X6 using a lot of subprograms and very little 3D geometry; very few of our progs ever exceed 10k...but this is a 3D mold fixture that's by far the biggest program this company has ever attempted to run.


Rob.

[bishb25]

What do you mean by "not DNC capable?" If you mean you don't have rs232 cables and a PC to drip feed from then you could DNC directly from a floppy if your machine has a floppy drive.

[mariojl]

If you were able to download your programs to a Pc, then you either used a RS232 cable or a regular pendrive ( by 2005 Haas should have a USB port), and in both cases you are able to DNC. I used to own several Haas machines, and drip feed programs of up to 30 Mb. machining plastic molds.
Kind regards
Mario