[ecdez]

I'm looking at a Kitamura mill with Fanuc 10M controls and have a question.

I'll preface it with this. I'm currently running a small benchtop machine with Mach3 and once I produce my g-code I open it in Mach3, set my zeros and hit run. Simple and easy.

Is it possible to do the same with the Fanuc 10M control? The guy selling it was showing me a few things but he didn't have it hooked to a computer and didn't know how to import programs from a desktop either. The machine has a defunct tape drive and a parallel port.

[JimBoyce]

That is not a parallel port, it is a 25 pin serial port. Check out RS232 info on this site for wire connections to a 9 pin serial on a computer.

[JimBoyce]

Good luck

[jbaz]

What model Kitamura? I have a Kit Mycenter 1 with a 0M control and I'm making the transition from Mach3 also. The short answer is most likely you can, but no it is not as easy, at least not at first unless the 10M control is more user friendly than a 0M. If it has a 25 pin serial port you should be able to drip feed and upload programs. You cannot however control the machine remotely like on Mach3, it can only execute programs remotely.

The process is slightly more involved as you need locate your "part zero" and either add those machine coordinates to the program, or setup a work offset and call that in the program, or touch off the work and issue a G92 in your program. Then you have to figure how to tool change with it. My Kit has to be Z home before the tool change command will execute and it will not automatically go home just from the command. I'm still working out the easiest way to do this since I am using G92 to set program zero since my softkeys don't work and it makes it a PITA to set G54 offsets. It is not terribly difficult once you become more versed in the way the Fanuc control works and Gcode in general, but it is not as simple as running a program in Mach, at least not out of the gate. You will need all of the manuals, there should be 4 of them, maybe more.

On the Kit there should be a switch near the tape drive to switch to an external device. That should be switched on. If not, it may be done through a parameter. That is how you will be able to communicate with the machine. If you do lots of 3d surfaces/profiles where you have a bunch of very short g-code moves you will want to do some searching on the buffer size and baud rate to see how it works with it unless you don't need a ton of speed. Older controls were not meant for drip feeding 3d so you can get some data starvation issues.

When you get it I wouldn't even concern yourself with the dripfeeding for a while because you're going to have your hands full with cleaning, doing the preventative maintenance, and reading the manuals over and over and playing in MDI and writing short programs on the machine to test what code you need to setup your post processor so it all works. The last thing you want to do it upload some code not being 100% how it will execute and have a crash when it is rapiding at 800 IPM. That sort of thing can put you down for repairs. The reason being is I was used to the same thing in Mach, but in Fanuc it is G-code driven, not press a couple buttons, you might have forgot to cancel some offsets, or the the tool length offsets aren't set right or it is using G54 instead of G53... just take it slow and it will work out but the learning curve on Mach3 was a couple hours, and so far this has been several days and I still haven't got the point of writing a multi-tool program yet, but I did spend a lot time stripping the panels and guards off the machines to clean it.

[ecdez]

Guess I need to edit my profile so I can get emails when there's a thread response.

I ended up not getting this machine as I found another one that matched my needs more closely. Thanks for the input though.